James Cameron

When James Cameron got up from his seat during the Academy Awards Celebration on March 23, 1998 to collect his third Oscar for "Titanic" (best editing, best direction and best picture), he was met on the way and embrased by Arnold Schwarzenegger . This gesture from one Hollywood giant to another was indeed very appropriate, since these two particular giants have each other to thank for everything they are today: It was namely James Camerons brilliant low-budget smash-hit "The Terminator" from 1984 which boosted both their careers and dragged them out from oblivion and into the starlight - a movie which would never have been a success without Camerons script and Schwarzeneggers chilling performance. Since their first co-operation they have worked together on two other blockbuster hits, "Terminator 2" (1991) and "True Lies" (1994), which consolidated their positions as two of the most succesfull people in American film industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

James Cameron was born on august 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. After watching Stanley Kubrick´s "2001, A Space Odyssey" (1968), he began experimenting with filmmaking, both writing, filming and building models for his own projects. He enroled at California State University to study physics, but dropped out and started work as a truck driver. When he saw George Lucas´ "Star Wars" in 1977, he decided that films was what he wanted to make. Cameron raised the money for his first short film, directed, shot and edited it himself. He also build the models himself, and this in particular made for a job interview with Roger Corman of New World Pictures. Cameron got the job as a special effects technician and soon after as art and production designer. He directed his first movie, the awful " The Spawning" in 1981, a job just as unpleasant as the final product was bad. Cameron had no control over the film himself, the crew on location in Jamaica spoke only Italian, and the finances were few. During post production, Cameron had a nightmare about a robot from the future, and when he returned to Los Angeles, he began writing a screenplay based on the dream. The title was "The Terminator" and the rest, as they say, is history: "The Terminator", which was shot on a budget of less than 7 million dollars, made more than that amount in the opening weekend and went on to be one of the most popular Sci-Fi movies ever.