James Cameron

James Cameron, seen here clutching his Best Director Oscar whilst taunting the nominees.

James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a near-influential Canadian film director and inventor who is known across most of Canada and Eastern Europe for his big-budget, Oscar scooping, record-breaking films, most notably Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and Avatar 2: Electric Boogaloo (2022), which are respectively first, second and ninth on Vanity Fair's 100 Most Profitable Ways James Cameron Makes Money. Among his other works are two of the four Terminator films, Aliens (1986), True Lies (1994) and various underwater documentaries created by Cameon over a period of boredom between Titanic and Avatar.

Aside from writing, directing, producing and editing films, Cameron has shown an unhealthy obsession with underwater filming technology, having created the SeaRover v5, the FishBuggy, the WaterproofMetalBox and the WaterproofMetalBoxOnWheels, the latter of which was adapted into the Mars 2 rover several years after its creation.

People who have starred in Cameron's films generally agree that he has a very harsh, sometimes murderous, temper. He was labeled as "...selfish, cruel and kinda sexy..." by sci-fi author Orson "Scotty" Card. Kate Winslet was slapped and subsequently stabbed by Cameron on the set of Titanic for coughing during one of his meditation sessions. This lead to Winslet refusing a main role in Avatar; she later admitted she still cried at night imbetween dreams of swimming in a pool of the money she would have made from the project, furthering Cameron's 'evil' reputation.

Early life

James Cameron was born in Kapuskaskupsapuskasing, Canada, in 1954 to an artist/nurse mother and an electric engineer father who wanted James to take up the engineer trade. The almost direct descendant of the Scottish clan "Clan Cameron", James Cameron displayed anger and violent tendancies as a young boy. The childeren in his school refered to him as the "crazy Nazi", as he would often have fantasies about intergalactic wars and blue people. Cameron was very interested in history and especially the RMS Titanic, but whether he was facinated by the event alone or the deaths it caused, nobody knows.

In 1971, Cameron's family moved to California. There, Cameron enrolled in a two-year community college to study english and physics but dropped out after two days. Now without anything to do, Cameron was hired as a truck driver. The hours were long, the pay was small and Cameron would be whipped if he made mistakes but he kept the job for three years. Then he quit after seeing the 1977 film Star Wars; the idea of science and fiction in the same sentence revolutionalised his way of thinking. Following this amazing discovery, Cameron stole a selection of filming equipment from the local orphans' charity and used them to create a ten minute short titled Xenogenesis. After he had finished this, he was hired by a then-unknown film company named Platinum Blue Productions to create minature models and, later, cover all of the special effects. Soon, Cameron would begin work on Piranha II, his first major film.

Films

Pirhanah II: The Spawning

James Cameron's first attempt at mainstream film was, everything considered, a complete fucking failure. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews and a Golden Raspberry award for Worst Attempt at Entertainment. In actual fact, Cameron was originally hired as the special effects director for this film and took over the direction when the original director left (he also re-wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Willy Stroker). Due to budget limitations the crew was composed essentially of Italians, none of whom spoke English. Some however did have prior experience on horror/fantasy/romantic comedy movies so they were, to some extent, able to satisfy Cameron's requirements. Cameron said about "directing" the film:

“ I was replaced after two-and-a-half weeks by the Italian producer. He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me. It wasn't until much later that I even figured out what had happened. It was like, "Oh, man, I thought I was doing a good job." But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn't take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn't deliver it with an Italian name. So they left me on, no matter what I did. I had no legal power to influence him from Pomona, California, where I was sleeping on a friend's couch. I didn't even know an attorney. In actual fact, I did some directing on the film, but I don't feel it was my first movie. ”

Several lawsuits later, Cameron had not succeeded in removing his name from the film and the 'Italian producer' threatened him with death if he continued to sue the distributor. At this point, Cameron went into a stress-induced coma and woke up in 1984, three years after Piranha II's release, babbling about an invincible robot hitman from the future who had been sent to kill him. Like all good film directors, Cameron found a way of making money from this, ie using the concept as the plotline for what he called his first true film, The Terminator.

The Terminator

Main article: Terminator

The titular "Terminator", played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

During the early 80's, Cameron would write up to seven screenplays at once. Out of the average nine that he would scrap, three would go through. One of these scripts was the first draft of The Terminator, a film about a robotic version of Arnold Schwarzenegger using his time machine to bang Linda Hamilton. Cameron would later state that the influences for the script included 50s B-movies, episodes of The Flintstones and an undeveloped movie script with the same name and content that he had found on the pavement. Cameron's agent told him to scrap the script. He was later crippled.

Once Cameron and his pen-pal Bill Wisher had finished writing the final draft, Cameron sold the rights to the film to Gale Ann Turd, a woman whom he had worked with before, for one dollar on the conditions that he would be the director of the film and that he could regularly make fun or her ridiculous name. Cameron soon claimed that she "did no actual sucking at all".

The role of the Terminator was originally meant to go to what Cameron described as "someone who could blend in". The studio had suggested O. J. Simpson for the role of the Terminator, but Cameron did not feel that Simpson would be believable as a killer. Cameron was told to hire Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of the character Kyle Reese but secretly disliked this idea, although he still agreed to meet with him. Cameron planned to pick a fight with him (although Cameron now admits that it was a bad idea) in order to not get him cast, however Cameron was entertained by Schwarzenegger who would talk about how the villain should be played. Cameron began sketching his face on a notepad and asked Schwarzenegger to shut up and remain still. After the meeting, Cameron returned to his apartment saying Schwarzenegger would not play Reese but that "he'd make a hell of a Terminator". Schwarzenegger was not as excited by the film; during an interview on the set of Conan the Barbarian, an interviewer asked him about a pair of shoes he had. Schwarzenegger responded, "Oh, some shit movie I'm doing, take a couple weeks." Kyle Reese was eventually played by Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen, who had starred in Piranha II, received the minor role of the Terminator's pimp.

The Terminator was a critical and box office hit, earning over $78 million worldwide. This was in stark contrast to both its $82 budget and the studio's expectations. Either way, Cameron was thoroughly pleased at the result. According to Allmovie, the film "...established James Cameron as a master of action, special effects, sex scenes and quasi-mythic narrative intrigue, while turning Arnold Schwarzenegger into the sex symbol of the 1980s." Now that James Cameron was well known, he could embark on a much more ambitious project...

Rambo: First Blood Part II

Main article: Rambo

...but first came this. Yeah, Rambo 2 was written by James Cameron.

Aliens

Biehn often carried guns on set.

Cameron's next project was to create a worthy follow-up to Ridley Scott's 1979 horror classic Alien. Rather than call it Alien 2: The Dramatic Return, as suggested by the studio, Cameron gave it the slightly more subtle name of Aliens and also changed the plot from cannibalistic strippers to something more in line with the first film. He and Gale Ann Turd (who by this time had married him) received producing rights and Cameron quickly took the director slot. One of the first characters to be cast was Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley from the first film. A payment dispute with 20th Century Fox almost let to her leaving the film, but luckily, Cameron's trusty nail-gun solved this before it could take effect. Another problem was the unruly British film crew, who felt that Cameron was too inexperienced to direct this film and mocked Gale Ann Turd, calling her a "skanky barmpot" and a "Billy no-mates". Once again, Cameron's nail-gun proved uselful.

Aliens revolves around Ellen Ripley, the heroine from the first film, and her second journey into space to fight the dreaded alien once again, this time with considerable firepower and a expendable crew of space marines, such as the heroic Hicks(Michael Biehn), the robotic bishop (Lance Henriksen), the annoying Private William Hudson (Bill Paxton) and a small newt. The film received critical and commercial success, grossing a total of $131 million. Many critics praised the film's overall message of "Don't sent women out to war" and its somewhat realistic special effects. The film won two Oscars, for sound and visual effects, and was nominated for five others, including a Best Actress for Weaver. Thanks to the success of Aliens, Cameron now had much more freedom to do whatever he wanted.

The Abyss

After a disastrous boat trip, Cameron was inspired to make a film taking place in the ocean. For inspiration he drank a large quantity of beer and, whilst drunk, wrote out a screenplay involving aliens. The next day Cameron woke up with no knowledge of the night before, instead finding the script and deciding to bring it to the studio for filming. Predictably, the studio accepted gleefully and even had filming equipment set up in a matter of hours. Cameron hired newcomers Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the main characters but cast familiar Michael Biehn as the primary villain. As much of the film took place underwater, Cameron decided to shoot much of the film in his swimming pool, however Gale Ann Turd argued with him over this and eventually divorced him.

Filming was disrupted when the swimming pool sprung a leak, sending hundreds of gallons of water on top of Michael Biehn. Biehn did not die but he needed to spend seven months in hospital. To replace him, Cameron ordered a CGI Michael Biehn to be added into the film during post-production. The successful results would later convince Cameron to go ahead with the T-1000 effects in T2. The Abyss grossed $90,000,000 - making it a financial success - and received mostly positive reviews. An extended edition was released in 2006. It featured extended sex scenes and more violence, hence the tagline "James Cameron's original vision."

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Terminator II: Judgement Day was always James Cameron's dearest wish. Ever since the original Terminator's sucess became clear, he attempted to write drafts for it but would often realise that he would rather do something else. Once The Abyss was completed, Cameron locked himself in a cage and attempted to write a full script. He used many of the things cut from the original film, such as the T-1000 character and homosexual subtext, to hurry up the process, finally finishing off his now 260 page script. The cast included Arnold Schwarzenegger returning as the Terminator, who was now on the "good" side, Linda Hamilton, also returning, Edward Furlong as dipshitty Young John Connor (Schwarzenegger said that he had the same personality as who he played), Robert Patrick as the mildly villainous 1-1000 and, of course, James Cameron himself in a brief cameo role as God.

TriStar Pictures agreed to distribute the film, but requested that the film go from screenplay to finished and full of explosions in just a year. Like Cameron's previous film, it was one of the most expensive films of its era, with a budget of about $100 million. The biggest challenge of the movie according to Cameron was the special effects used in creating the T-1000 (or convincing Linda Hamilton to do a nude scene). Nevertheless, the film was finished on time, and released to theaters on July 3, 1991. It broke multiple box office records, like the opening weekend record for an NC-17 rated film, the highest total gross for a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the highest grossing film of that week. Of the $519,000,000 total gross, 62% went to Schwarzenegger (it would later be used as bribe money) and only 3% went to Cameron. He was allegedly disappointed with this but nevertheless expressed happiness at the high grosses.

Critics were very happy with the film. Many said that it was better than the original, although cited Connor's clumsy "comic relief" actions and annoying teenager-esque speech as the film's weak points. The film currently has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the Terminator was number 48 on AFI's list of the 100 best screen heroes (the Terminator's appearance in the first film also gave the 22 spot on AFI's corresponding list of villains). The film won four Oscars and was nominated for a further two.

True Lies

After T2, Cameron considered making a Hollywood remake of the 1991 French porno La Totale!. When explaining why, he said:

“ It was perfect. The perfect plot, I mean. Really, if those French bastards had any brains, they'd just, um, hand the script over, you know? ”

Soon enough, Cameron had written the script for the remake. The plot was about a married secret agent who leads a double life. Soon, he realises that his sex life is more or less dead and his wife is cheating on him, and uses his high government status to torture his wife into loving him again, all whilst fighting evil Iraq terrorists. By this time, the studio execs had gained confidence with Cameron's moneymaking abilities and gave the film a $100 million budget - making it the second most expensive film ever behind the record-breaking Freddy Got Fingered. However, Cameron put this money to good use, spending only two thirds of it on a gold champagne bar. The rest was divided into three amounts: the largest for hiring Schwarzenegger as the main character and the smallest for effects.

Despite this, the film still was a success. Like most of Cameron's film's, it received critical praise. Many said that the film worked as a comedy and horror film at the same time. Schwarzenegger's acting was also viewed in a positive light. James Berardinelli said that "his wooden acting has a unique charm." The film also grossed nearly four times its budget, being third highest grossing film of that year.

Titanic

Main article: Titanic

An original production sketch drawn by James Cameron himself. After the studio rewrite of the script it was directly used in the film.

As previously stated, James Cameron had always been interested in the voyage and sinking, but mostly the sinking, of the RMS Titanic. It had never yet occurred to him that he could exploit his high position in the film industry and make a (judging by his talents) successful adaption of the events. In fact, two previous adaptions of it (released 1943 and 1953) had already been made, but Cameron felt that neither of them contained the nudity modern audiences favour over heartwarming drama.

In the end, Cameron's shipwreck fetish was the reason the film was made. Soon after the premiere of True Lies, Cameron fell into a deep depression, being last seen in a recorded interview for Porn Monthly. Subsequent Porn Monthly interviews revealed that he had been mulling over the choice to abandon science for arts in high school. Towards the end of the depression, he concluded that he would seek Hollywood funding to go on an undersea expedition to explore the Titanic's corpse. In order to do so, Cameron wrote an excessively long script for a Titanic film, met with 20th Century Fox executives, and pitched it as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic". There was a tense pause and Cameron said, "Also, fellas, it's a period piece, it's going to cost $150,000,000 and there's not going to be a sequel...." According to Cameron, "They were like, 'Oooooohkaaaaaay – a three-hour romantic horror spoof? Sure, that's just what we want. Is there a little bit of Terminator in that? Any Harrier jets, shoot-outs, or car chases? Any tits, at least?' I said, 'No, no, no. It's not like that. Well, I can get the tits in.'" The studio was dubious about the idea's commercial prospects, but they were convinced that the inclusion of tits would make the project a winner, and they were also hoping not to enrage Cameron, so they gave him a greenlight.

Now that he had the money, Cameron's master plan was to convince the studio execs that he was genuinely going to visit the wreck for the purpose of improving the film. He did this with a second, slightly shorter pitch: "OK, what we're going to have at the start is this scene where they're underwater and they find the diamond. We can take X amount of money and do that scene with elaborate models and GGI and all that crap or we can take X amount of money plus some 30% extra and send me down there with a video camera. And pot."

So, Cameron, over a period of two years, went to visit the Titanic's wreck and filmed most of it with his handheld camera. At that point, the studio asked him when they would start filming. Cameron reportedly said that he already had the footage for the first scene, and sent them the tape in the mail. After that, the studio got him to actually get a start on the rest of the project, so Cameron randomly selected his cast; Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were the first to be chosen. "After all," Cameron later said. "You've got to blow the budget on something!" Other cast members included Bill Paxton, Jack Black, Rosie O'Donnel and, last of all, Cameron making a brief appearance cleaning the poop deck.

Critics said that DiCaprio and Winslet's on-screen chemistry was "saucy".

After finishing the underwater scenes, Cameron was ordered by the studio to rewrite, or at least improve upon, the current script. Cameron finally felt it was his duty to make this a good film, quickly working out the best way to mix sex and violence seamlessly. Soon enough, proper filming could begin, and Cameron chose the infamous drawing scene first. Because DiCaprio and Winslet had not yet worked on the film, let alone with each other, they felt slightly uncomfortable about it. To make them comply, Cameron got out his whip. The bloody scars it left were removed from the scene in post-production. Cameron said about the scene: "It wasn't by any kind of design, although I couldn't have designed it better. There's a nervousness and an energy and a hesitance in them. If I'd had a choice, I probably would have preferred to put it deeper into the body of the shoot." He said he and his crew "were just trying to find things to shoot" because the big set was not yet ready. "It wasn't ready for months, so we were scrambling around trying to fill in anything we could get to shoot." After seeing the scene on film, Cameron felt it worked out well, considering its purpose.

After the indoor scenes were completed, filming was put on hold as Cameron had requested a full size replica of half of the ship to be made. Unable to cope with his crazy demands, many fainted upon hearing this and others killed themselves effieciently. In the end, Cameron bought a mail-order Titanic, and shooting the rest of the film could finally begin.

During shooting, an angry crew member put the hallucinogen PCP into the soup that Cameron and various others ate one night, which sent more than 50 people to the hospital. "There were people just rolling around, completely out of it. Some of them said they were seeing streaks and psychedelics," said actor Lewis Abernathy. Cameron managed to vomit before the drug took a full hold. Abernathy was shocked at the way he looked. "One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye. A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he’d been sniffing glue since he was four." The person behind the poisoning was never caught.

Shooting was meant to last for 18 days, but this foolish prediction was woefully inadequate. Filming went on and on for 160 days, and many of these were spent teaching Kate Winslet to swim. Once filming was over digital effects were applied (an example is the shots of DiCaprio getting his hair wet) and Cameron was set on editing the footage into a mildly understandable order. Upon showing test audiences the first cut of the film, Cameron removed some forty minutes from the film. One key scene removed was, of course: the other ship which decided to turn off its communication system before the Titanic could sent a call for help. When asked about this, Cameron seemed to blush and then punched the interviewer in the face.

Titanic was a great commercial success. After a failed first screening at the Tokyo Internation Film Festival, the film was rebranded as a mix of Michael Bay and softcore pornography. This new strategy proved to work well, earning the film a grand total of close to two billion dollars worldwide. This was a world record which was only broken after almost twelve years by James Cameron's Avatar.

One of the many things Titanic was famous for was its immense awards sweep. Despite critics comparing it to the likes of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos: The Hands of Fate, the film finally ended up with four Golden Globes, an Emmy, three Golden Raspberries, a Kids Choice Award for Favourite Movie, two MTV Movie Awards, the People's Choice Award for Best Film, a Japanese Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and, of course, eleven Oscars. The film's "hijacking" of the Oscars culminated in Cameron shouting to the audience "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD, BI-YATCHES!" upon winning Best Director (this is pictured above). The Oscars won are: Best Picture, Best Director. Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Biggest Budget, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song, and Best Art Direction. Kate Winslet, the makeup department and Gloria Stewart (the actress who played the "Senile Rose" character) were the only nominees that did not win. Cameron's script and, unsurprisingly, DiCaprio's acting, were not nominated.

Avatar

Main article: Avatar

Considered Cameron's masterpiece by some and too fucking slow-paced by others, Avatar is his latest film (as it was released in the winter of 2009), and consists mainly of this:

Sweet.

Even better.

The plot of Avatar, therefore, is simple but effective: tits, guns and blue people. A more elaborate summary would reveal that the film is actually a (very) modern spin on the traditional Pocahontas tale. Cameron himself has admitted to plagarising much of Pocahontas' story and characters. Despite this, the film remains an expertly crafted thrill ride, filled with morals and brainless action-adventure themes.

Avatar started off as an 80-page script written by Cameron in 1994. There were many differences between this and the modern version, such as the fact that the plot was actually original. Cameron filed this away anyway, probably intending to rewrite it sooner or later. However, True Lies and Titanic got in the way of this, to the point that he only found the Avatar script again because he was cleaning out his basements. Upon finding it, he announced that he would make an adaption of it, that it would be really expensive and that it would win many awards. Few people disputed this claim, and Cameron could begin.

For much of 2006, Cameron spent time locked away in his mansion working on the script. He also managed to develop a culture for the Na'vi aliens in the film (he describes them as "loud, lazy and very often horny). Former Vice President Dr Paul Frommer was hired by Cameron to create the Na'vi language seen often in the film. The result of his work was roughly 1000 Na'vi words, with separate vowels, verbs and so on, although the language was mainly made up of ejective consonants, and a fully functioning grammar system. Out of these 1000 words, some eight were used in the script by Cameron, usually in no grammatical order and being repeated many times. The rest were made up by Cameron. When asked why, he said that he "didn't have enough time" to bother listening to Frommer.

As work on the film steadily progressed, 20th Century Fox became worried. Someone was stealing from the executive icebox, and the film's $240 million budget was going up fast. They thought that Avatar would go down a similar path as Titanic, whose production was littered with many delays, cost overruns and icebox raids. Fox eventually pulled the plug on the project, but eventually returned funding after Dick Cook, then-president of The Walt Disney Company showed interest in buying the film.

Avatar's filming was a long and complicated process.

Avatar is often thought of as containing many conflicting themes, like love, hate, war and racial discrimination, in order to symbolise the human mind. Unfortunately, no one can find these themes in the film. Cameron insists that the film is either full of themes or full of plagiarism, admitting that the plot borrows elements from Dances With Wolves and Bram Stoker's Dracula. No lawsuits have yet been started.

Motion capture shots were filmed at Playa Vista, and live action filming started October 2007 in New Zealand. During much of the filming, Cameron used a special virtual camera system that he had invented, which would place the actors being filmed into a CGI background in real time. Unfortunately, someone had wiped all the pre-set backgrounds and replaced them with scenes from pornographic tapes. Another interesting new piece of equipment was the "stimulcam", which was used when actors were required to interact with CGI elements.

Many visual effects were used in the film, all of them digital. As well as making the film look nice, the effects used to create it came dangerously close to pioneering new technology. Critics praised the effects, as with many other aspects of the film. Roger Ebert said that he felt the same way watching Avatar as when he watched Star Wars and Lord of the Rings; extremely horny. People reportedly warmed to Sam Worthington's acting and enjoyed the 3D aspect of the film. The film also broke the record for the most money made by James Cameron - a record previously held by Titanic.

Future Projects

Cameron and Worthington being interviewed about Avatar 2.

Avatar 2: Electric Boogaloo, Avatar III: The Search For God

Shortly after securing the deal for Avatar, Cameron decided that he would make some sequels to go with it. The original plan was to make as many as possible from a $50 budget, and that they would really be stolen fanfics. However, this was plan was scrapped when Cameron realised that most if not all of the Avatar fanfics could be classified as pornography. Even though this would certainly draw in more cinema goers, Sam Worthington (who had a lead role in Avatar) had a phobia of it, and as his contract made him hang around for five more Avatars at least, the crew did not want to lose him. Finally, after being told about the Lord of the Rings series several times, Cameron decided to make two sequels, thus completing a trilogy. Although many rumours have flown around, Cameron has only confirmed the film's names (Avatar 2: Electric Booglaoo and Avatar III: The Search For God), that they will be released in 2014 and 2015 respectively and they they will both be in 3D. After being asked for other details, he said that he had not yet made up his mind.

T-2: Titanic 3D

Another of Cameron's "projects" is to re-release Titanic in 3D. Cameron commented on this whilst at Comic Con 2009, saying "Yes, I've gone as far as re-releasing old movies now." Cameron plans to convert all four hours of the film into Digital 3D and market it as an entirely different film. It will be released. on the 6th of April, 2012, which by a strange coincidence is the 100th anniversary of Paramount Pictures, the company which distributed the first Titanic.

Awards

Cameron's Golden Raspberry for worst screenplay, pictured shortly after the ceremony.

James Cameron has directly won three Academy Awards, all for Titanic: Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Film. Two of these were meant to be shared with others, but they weren't. Also among his Oscar achievements are three nominations (Again Directing, Editing and Picture), each for Avatar, which proves how overrated the film is. He has eight Saturn Awards, including two "really, really important" Presidents Awards. Other awards are two Eddies, an Amanda, three BAFTA nominations, a Blue Ribbon, a Critics Choice Award, a Chicago Film Critics Association Award (Cameron refused this), an Audience Award, two coveted César nominations, a friggin' Best DVD Commentary Award (what the...), A Director's Guld of Turkey Award, an Empire Award, two Golden Globes, a "Sierra Award" from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, a Golden Raspberry for Worst Screenplay, a Golden Satellite Award, a Nicola Tesla award for Most Shocking Film (wink), a Lifetime Achievement Award... from the Visual Effects Society and many others. Apparently, he keeps them all in his broom cupboard(s) or his torture chamber when he is short on space.

Trademarks

James Cameron tends to make women who normally would not look hot the sexiest woman on the planet. Examples include Neytri in Avatar, Linda Hamilton in Terminator, Senile Rose from Titanic, Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies and the Alien Queen in Aliens. After they work with James Cameron they are forever hot. He also has a war shit in his films as a reccuring theme, possibly because he is very lazy, and features nuclear weapons in almost all of his films, mainly because he can. Another common element in his films in sex, sex scenes, or if the film is PG-13, nipples. Yet another thing Cameron does with almost all of his films is start them with one of two letters:

• Terminator
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• True Lies
• Titanic

• Aliens
• Abyss
• Avatar

Collaborations

Cameron tends to work with people more than once, usually because he will not need to posses people so often this way.

Actor	Terminator (1984)	Aliens (1986)	The Abyss (1989)	Terminator 2 (1991)	True Lies (1994)	Titanic (1997)	Avatar (2009)	Avatar 2 (2014)	Avatar 3 (2015)
Michael Biehn
Bill Paxton		X			O
Linda Hamilton			X		O
Arnold Schwarzennegger	X			X	X
Lance Henricksen	X				O
Sigourney Weaver		X				X		O
Sam Worthington							X
Zoe Saldana									X
Robert Downey Jr.	X	X		O				X
Megan Fox				X		X	X	O

Personal Life

God on Earth... or just plain GOD?

Cameron has had five wives over the years and four childeren. His first marrige was to Sharron Q. Williams in 1978, although it ended six years later when Williams discoved that Cameron was being creative without her permission. The next year, Cameron expressed his love for partner-in-crime Gale Ann Turd, who had helped write The Terminator and produced many other Cameron films, including Aliens and The Abyss. After the aforementioned pool mishap, where Gale did not want Cameron shooting in their pool, the pair divorced. Several days later, Cameron hooked up with Kathryne Bigelow and married her. They stayed in a steady relationship until 1991, at which point squabbles over their respective careers lead to, predictably, a divorce. Since then, the two have been extremely competitive in terms of filmmaking - after beating Avatar to the Best Picture Oscar with her The Ow-wie Locker, Bigelow gave Cameron the finger and threw her award at him. After this, Cameron dated Linda Hamilton and finally married her in 1997. They had a daughter together, but Hamilton strategically divorced Cameron 1999 so that, because of Titanic's success, he would have to give her $50 million. Cameron finally married Suzy Amis in 2000 and they have not yet divorced, possibly because Cameron fears for the safety of his money.

See Also

• Michael Biehn
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Terminator
• RMS Avatar
• Avatar

  Film directors of the world  

Visionaries:	Ingmar Bergman ♦ Peter Bogdanovich ♦ James Cameron ♦ Charlie Chaplin ♦ Coen Brothers ♦ Francis Ford Coppola ♦ Clint Eastwood ♦ Sergei Eisenstein ♦ Federico Fellini ♦ Alfred Hitchcock ♦ Stanley Kubrick ♦ Mira Nair ♦ Martin Scorsese ♦ Steven Spielberg ♦ Andrei Tarkovsky ♦ Orson Welles
Not-so-epic:	Michael Bay ♦ Neill Blomkamp ♦ Uwe Boll ♦ Tim Burton ♦ John Carpenter ♦ David Cronenberg ♦ Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ♦ Mel Gibson ♦ Tom Green ♦ Spike Lee ♦ Sergio Leone ♦ George Lucas ♦ Dolph Lundgren ♦ Spike Milligan ♦ Michael Moore ♦ Leonard Nimoy ♦ Guy Ritchie ♦ George Romero ♦ Joel Schumacher ♦ M. Night Shyamalan ♦ Alan Smithee ♦ Billy Bob Thornton ♦ Joss Whedon ♦ Tommy Wiseau ♦ John Woo ♦ Ed Wood
Big in France:	Woody Allen ♦ Michelangelo Antonioni ♦ Darren Aronofsky ♦ Mel Brooks ♦ Sofia Coppola ♦ Jean-Luc Godard ♦ Jim Jarmusch ♦ Charlie Kaufman ♦ Jerry Lewis ♦ David Lynch ♦ Nicolas Winding Refn ♦ Rob Schneider | Remi Gaillard
Big in Japan:	Terry Gilliam ♦ Akira Kurosawa ♦ Russ Meyer ♦ Quentin Tarantino
Disturbing:	Guillermo del Toro ♦ Robert Rodriguez ♦ Rob Zombie