James Cameron

Born on August 16, 1954, Canadian James Francis Cameron is the son of an engineer, Philip, and Shirley, a nurse. When he was 17 years old, his father was transferred to California, United States, which became the adoptive and definitive home of the family. He started studying physics at Fullenton College, but has never finished his degree. “I never had a problem with the abstract concepts of physics, but calculus was the only subject that stuck for me. With such high requirements in calculus and geometry, I knew that sooner or later I was going to hit the wall”, commented the filmmaker.

He decided to drop out of school and work as a truck driver, later becoming a school bus driver. One day he met a waitress, Sharon Williams, with whom he fell in love and with whom he would end up marrying.

Two films left an impression on the young Cameron. one was2001: A Space Odyssey , which made him fond of science fiction. The other was much more decisive for his life. He still remembers the date – August 25, 1977 – on which he went to the cinema to seeStar Wars , released shortly before, and which was just the type of film he dreamed of directing. “It can be done,” he said enthusiastically as soon as the projection of the George Lucas film ended. “That day I went from being a weed-smoking, truck-racing idiot to the obsessive maniac I am now,” the filmmaker explains.

Determined to emulate Lucas, Cameron combined his work as a conductor during the day, with an intense dedication to writing scripts and painting, at night.

In 1978 he met several members of a dental association who had money to invest in the cinema. Apparently, this was the only way to pay less taxes, and besides, they hoped to achieve great success asStar Wars , which gave them huge benefits. So they financed Xenogenesis , their first short, co-written and directed with Randall Frakes , a debtor to the Lucas saga.

The short was never released anywhere, but was seen by B-movie king Roger Corman , always on the lookout for young talent to recruit for his company, New World, who could make imaginative movies without paying them. such as Francis Ford Coppola , Jonathan Demme , etc. Cameron was hooked up for the art direction department, and to collaborate on special effects for The Magnificent Seven from Space . This unspeakable post George Lucas version ofThe Magnificent Seven , and therefore ofThe seven samurai , counted as a screenwriter with another young promise, no less than John Sayles .

After working as an assistant director on another Corman factory title, The Galaxy of Terror , Cameron accepted the offer of other producers who hired him for the bizarrePiranha II: Vampires of the Sea , sequel to the film with which Joe Dante had managed to exploit the good taste in the mouth that Spielberg had left withshark . In Cameron’s film, the piranhas were scarier than ever, because they also flew, but he didn’t want the producers to tell him how to make the movie, so they fired him. Although they kept him in the credits as sole director, the reality is that the Italian Ovidio G. Assonitis made almost the entire film, and for that reason, Cameron does not consider it his.

He managed to stay in the industry as a screenwriter, as he was hired to write the scripts for the sequels ofcornered andAlien, the eighth passenger , two of the greatest hits of the moment. While working on a commercial in Rome, he woke up in the hotel one night with a fever and began to draw pictures. One of them was a ball of fire coming out of a cyborg, which gave him an idea to make a movie that would change his career forever.Terminator , where Arnold Schwarzenegger was a machine sent from the future to assassinate the mother of the man who had started a war against the machines, before he was born.

The film was an unprecedented success – so far it has spawned three sequels and a television series – and also raved about critics, for Cameron’s ability to shoot a film that seems much more expensive than it is. There are actually a lot less special effects than it seems, but these are very brilliant. And it is that Corman had taught him to manage the budget well.

He also stretched the budget to the max inAliens, the return , since the Fox executives who had entrusted him with the script, decided to trust him as a director (the other script he had written during this time led toRambo ). In reality, the aliens are barely visible, and the film is much cheaper than one might deduce.

In an industry where the producers of sequels insist that these be photocopies of the original, Cameron’s ability to give its own identity to a film that is not exactly horror, like Ridley Scott ‘s , but rather action is surprising. If Linda Hamilton had played a woman who faced the cyborg from Terminator , this time she had as protagonist another woman “of arms”, Sigourney Weaver (Lieutenant Ellen Ripley). Undoubtedly, these types of women are a constant in his filmography.

He started spending big budgets withAbyss , which at the time was the most expensive movie ever made. It was also Cameron’s most personal, obsessed with the seabed and the color blue, which predominates in his filmography to the point of obsession (see the Na’vi ofAvatar ). In the film, team members from a sophisticated research station discover evidence of unknown beings living in the depths.

Cameron then continued to wow viewers with Terminator 2 , revolutionary in its use of special effects, with memorable sequences, such as when the new villain, T-1000, hides by blending into the ground.

He recovered Schwarzenegger in the excellentRisky Lies , a remake of a French comedy, to which Cameron provided the most colorful action.

WithTitanic was about to sink, like the famous ocean liner. It cost more than initially thought, to the point of being the first film to exceed $200 million ( Terminator 2it had cost 100 and that had caused vertigo in Hollywood a few years before). It is said that if this reconstruction of the famous tragedy had failed at the box office, Fox would not exist today. But the reality was quite different. It became an extra-film phenomenon that broke all box office records. Not only was there an audience that repeated and went through the box office several times, but a decade later it continued to become the audience leader in its television shows around the world. He also won 11 Oscars, a figure hitherto reached only byBen-Hur (1959) and that would revalidateThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King .

Some Spanish film journalists met Cameron during his promotional visit to Spain for this film. In person, his contagious enthusiasm is striking, and the facility he has to refute arguments against his cinema. I myself attacked him for Titanic from all sides and he managed to turn everything around.

“Don’t you think it’s a topical love story?” I asked. “The story of the sinking of the Titanic had already been filmed many times. I have added this unforgettable love story, which was totally necessary. ”, He replied convinced. And I: “Don’t you think that the duration is excessive?” To which he replied: “I have not been able to get them to let me last longer. And it’s a shame, because for example, in one sequence I have rebuilt the boat’s gym, which I hope can be seen one day in another montage…”

However, Titanic took its toll on him. The director was about to die of success. It has spent more than a decade in dry dock. He fell out as a director of several sequels. ForTerminator 3. Rise of the Machines asked for an unlimited budget, and ended up being replaced by Jonathan Mostow . An old project of yoursSpider-Man , ended up in the hands of Sam Raimi . He also failed to pull off the sequel to Risky Lies . Only the series created by him went ahead,Dark Angel , and worked as a producer of some television documentaries and the new version ofSolaris (2002) .

With Avatar he broke a new budget record. Officially it has cost 300 million, although this time Fox resorted to all possible insurance companies just in case. Cameron himself was quite calm. “I’m going to revolutionize the cinema,” he boasted. And it turns out that he has succeeded.

Impressive for its use of the possibilities of 3D and the photorealism of a world that has been created entirely by computer, the film became the highest grossing film in history, surpassing the record of Titanic .

Sequels are already announced, although Cameron is also immersed in a project about the explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is preparing Battle Angel , an adaptation of a Japanese series by Yukito Kishiro.

On a sentimental level, his dedication to the cinema has prevented him from maintaining a stable relationship. After divorcing the aforementioned Sharon Williams, he has been together with the producer Gale Anne Hurd , the filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow , the actress Linda Hamilton –with whom he had a daughter– and the also actress Suzy Amis , with whom he has had other three shoots.