Robert Patrick Actually Caught John Connor on the Set of ‘Terminator 2,’ And James Cameron’s Reaction Was Priceless
Robert Patrick has been sharing behind-the-scenes stories from ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day‘ for years, but a clip pulled from an Empire Magazine interview has gone massively viral, and it is not hard to see why. In it, Patrick casually reveals that during the first take of the iconic shopping mall chase sequence, he ran so fast as the T-1000 that he actually caught Edward Furlong’s John Connor before the scene could play out, leaving him with an immediate problem and director James Cameron in shock.
As Patrick explained in the Empire interview, the first time they filmed the run at the mall, before the semi-truck sequence, he closed the gap on Furlong entirely. His own words, included in the viral clip: “That’s me. First time I did the run, I caught the kid.
The anecdote perfectly captures why the T-1000 became one of cinema’s most unsettling villains. What makes Patrick’s performance so effective even now is not just the liquid metal effects but the physical reality of the man under them.
Patrick trained intensively for the role, mastering a Beretta 92FS at the insistence of Cameron, who required him to reload the weapon at full speed without looking and without blinking, a detail Patrick added as a personal flourish that he has cited with pride ever since.
The background behind how Patrick even landed the role adds another layer to the mythology. Billy Idol was originally set to play the T-1000, but a motorcycle accident that injured Idol’s leg made the physically demanding role impossible for him.
After the door opened, Patrick’s agent pitched him to casting director Mali Finn as a cross between David Bowie and James Dean, and Cameron cast him based largely on his physical appearance and an intensity that felt right for a machine built to hunt without emotion.
The film, released in 1991, went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and became one of the defining blockbusters of its era, eventually crossing $520 million worldwide against a $94 million budget. Empire ranked the T-1000 at number 19 in its list of the best cinematic villains, with the publication noting that Patrick’s “liquid, shark-like” screen presence left something “unforgettably nightmarish” in the memory
The clip circulating now is part of Empire’s ongoing retrospective coverage surrounding the film, which has seen renewed cultural interest this year. For anyone who grew up watching Patrick absolutely refuse to stop running no matter what came at him, finding out he was capable of running fast enough to break the scene entirely is the most perfectly on-brand revelation the ‘Terminator 2’ mythology could have produced.
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