This one barely needs spelling out, does it? Sarah Connor may well be the best-known mother in cinema, and for extremely good reason. Not only is she mother to humanity's future saviour, John Connor, she does her fair share of saving it herself in both The Terminator and T2: Judgement Day because, as we all know, if you're waiting for a man to turn up and do a job then you might as well just do it yourself. Linda Hamilton plays Connor with an emotional authenticity in both movies that allows her transformation from innocent civilian to warrior woman to play as completely believable (well, at least in the context of a film about time-travelling robots) and she's given plenty of cinematic moments in which to shine, from her first triumph against Arnie's Terminator to her tooled-up desert persona. Connor's legacy is such that she even had a TV show named after her in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and she's definitely notable for her absence in the inferior sequels Terminator 3 and Salvation, proving that an unstoppable killing machine doesn't make a Terminator movie; a woman with boundless courage and nerves of steel does. Which movie mothers do you think deserve to be mentioned on this list? Share your own picks below in the comments.
