James Cameron

Director and screenwriter. Born August 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, to Shirley and Philip Cameron. Raised in Chippawa, Ontario, Cameron graduated Stamford Collegiate High School in Chippewa in 1972. After graduation, he and his family moved to Orange County, California. A physics major at California State University, Cameron dropped out of college to drive a truck and a bus while writing screenplays in his spare time. Indulging a passionate interest in filmmaking, he studied graduate students’ papers about creating special effects for the movies at the University of Southern California library. “I literally put myself into a graduate course on film technology for free,” Cameron said of his commitment to self-study. “I didn’t have to enroll in school, it was all there in the library.” Cameron’s first movie industry job involved building miniature sets for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. He then became the art director and special effects cameraman for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), and was production designer and second-unit director on Galaxy of Terror (1981). He was named special effects supervisor on John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) and made his major directorial debut with Piranha II: The Spawning (1981). For several years afterward, Cameron worked as a “script doctor,” ghostwriting other writers’ screenplays until 1984, when he wrote and directed his breakthrough film The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron went on to direct Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), and Point Break (1991). When he made Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was the most expensive movie to date, costing $100 million to produce. Fortunately for Cameron, it ended up earning $500 million at the box office. Next was an even more expensive film, True Lies (1994), also starring Schwarzenegger. That film was made for $150 million and enjoyed similar box office success. Cameron wrote and produced Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days in 1995 while in pre-production for his next film, Titanic (1997), which bested the filmmaker's own record for most expensive movie ever made, with a final cost of $200 million. The film was plagued by difficulties during production, running over budget and over schedule, but it became the highest grossing film in history, surpassing George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). On March 23, 1998, Titanic received 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, prompting Cameron to quote his star Leonardo DiCaprio's triumphant line from the film: "I'm the King of the World!" In 2000, Cameron created the science fiction television series Dark Angel, starring newcomer Jessica Alba as a genetically engineered teenager working as a bike messenger and crime fighter in post-apocalyptic Seattle. The show found a cult following, but remained on shaky ground with its ratings. Cameron is set to make both True Lies 2 and Terminator 3 in 2002. Cameron married Sharon Williams in 1974 and divorced her in 1985 to marry producer Gale Anne Hurd. He divorced Hurd in 1989 and married director Kathryn Bigelow the same year. He divorced Bigelow in 1991. In the early 1990s, he began a relationship with actress Linda Hamilton, who co-starred in The Terminator films. They have a daughter, Josephine Archer Cameron, born on February 15, 1993. In 1997, Cameron and Hamilton married, but they divorced a year later. In June 2000, Cameron married the actress Suzy Amis, whom he became romantically involved with during the filming of Titanic. The couple had a baby (no other details were released) in the spring of 2001.