Resident Alien’s Linda Hamilton on Becoming a Grandma and Her Shift Away from ‘Tough Guy’ Roles (Exclusive)

Linda Hamilton has long talked about calling it quits in her acting career, but she now happily admits she’s “very bad at retiring.”

“I don’t know where I stand on that now. I just love the work. I don’t love the travel and leaving home all the time, and it’s kind of splitting hairs,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively, “Since I said I wanted to retire, I have not stopped working.”

Known for her role as Sarah Connor in the Terminator films, Hamilton, 68, has an upcoming part in Netflix’s Stranger Things, and she’s reprised her role in SYFY and USA’s Resident Alien as General Eleanor Wright, whom she calls a “very complex character.”

These days, though, the nostalgic star is looking to bring something more heartwarming to the screen.

“I’ve told my agents if it isn’t cuddly, don’t bring it to me. I’ll let them interpret what cuddly is,” she says. “I’m real tired of tough guys. I want to smile on film.”

She continues, “It’s just that I’ve spent an entire career of people coming up to me, people that have never met me before, and go, ‘Oh, you’re so pretty in person.’ So what that implies is that I’m not pretty on film. I’m like, ‘You’ve never seen me smile on film.’ Cuddly.”

That’s not to say that the Dante’s Peak star hasn’t brought joy to viewers, some of whom have a hard time separating fiction from reality, primarily based on her iconic Terminator character.

“People actually come up to me and treat me like I saved the world. You know what I mean? It’s amazing. For years now, people just come up with this gratitude, which is kind of wonderful,” she says, adding, “I have to remind them I didn’t really save the world.”

For all the accolades she’s earned in acting, Hamilton jokingly puts things in perspective.

“I like to tell people that I’m from a family of doctors and law enforcement, and I’m the one who didn’t do something with her life in my family,” she says with a laugh. “In my family, I’m nothing.”

Coincidentally, her family is growing too, as Hamilton reveals that she became a grandmother for the first time nearly six months ago, calling her grandchild, a boy, “just so precious.”

“I actually feel like we’ve known each other,” the mom of two says of her grandson. “There is something when we look at each other, and I’m like, ‘What is happening here?’ I don’t remember that feeling with my children. I mean, I guess you’re too busy raising them and being a single parent, but I have looked at this boy too many times now and just gone, ‘We’ve known each other,’ so it’s lovely.”

Resident Alien airs on USA Network and SYFY on Friday nights at 11 p.m. ET. Episodes are available to stream on Peacock one week later.