James Cameron
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This article is about the Canadian film director. For other uses, see James Cameron (disambiguation).
| James Cameron | |
|---|---|
 James Cameron in October 2012 | |
| Born | James Francis Cameron August 16, 1954 Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada |
| Residence | Malibu, California, US |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Citizenship | Canada |
| Education | Brea Olinda High School |
| Alma mater | Fullerton College |
| Occupation | Film director, producer, editor, screenwriter, environmentalist, explorer, Painter |
| Years active | 1976–present |
| Notable work(s) | |
| Influenced by | Edgar Rice Burroughs, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen,Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas,Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg |
| Influenced | J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay,Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Berg,Tim Burton, Peter Jackson,Joseph Kosinski, Baz Luhrmann, Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, Rupert Wyatt |
| Home town | Chippawa, Ontario |
| Net worth | $900 million (2013 est.)[1] |
| Awards | See Awards |
James Francis Cameron[2] (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, film producer, deep-sea explorer, screenwriter, and editor.[3][4][5][6] He first found success with the sci-fi hit The Terminator (1984). He then became a popular Hollywood director and was hired to write & direct Aliens(1986) and three years later followed up with The Abyss (1989). He found further critical acclaim for his use of special effects in the action packed blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). After his film True Lies (1994) Cameron took on his biggest film at the time Titanic (1997) which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and him the Academy Award for Best Director & Film Editing. After Titanic, Cameron began a project that took almost 10 years to make, his sci-fi epic Avatar (2009), for which he was nominated for Best Director & Film Editing again. In the time between makingTitanic and Avatar, Cameron spent several years creating many documentary films (specifically underwater documentaries) and co-developed the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist,[7] Cameron has also contributed to underwater filmingand remote vehicle technologies.[5][6][8] On March 26, 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, in theDeepsea Challenger submersible.[9][10][11] He was the first person to do this in a solo descent, and only the third person to do so ever.
He has been nominated for six Academy Awards overall and won three for Titanic. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide.[12] Not adjusted for inflation, Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time at $2.19 billion and $2.78 billion respectively.[13] In March 2011 he was named Hollywood's top earner by Vanity Fair, with estimated 2010 earnings of $257 million.[14]
Background [edit]
Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, in 1954, the son of Shirley (née Lowe), an artist and nurse, and Phillip Cameron.[15][16] His paternal great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Balquhidder, Scotland in 1825;[15] thus, he descends from Clan Cameron.
Cameron grew up in Chippawa, Ontario, with his only brother Mike. He attended Stamford Collegiate School in Niagara Falls, Ontario. In 1971, his family moved to Brea, California, when Cameron was 17 years old.[17] Cameron enrolled at Fullerton College, a 2-year community college, in 1973 to study physics. He switched to English, then dropped out before the start of the fall 1974 semester.[18]
After dropping out of Sonora High School, he went to further his secondary education at Brea Olinda High School. After graduating, he worked several jobs such as truck driving and wrote when he had time.[19] During this period he taught himself about special effects: "I'd go down to the USC library and pull any thesis that graduate students had written about optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology. That way I could sit down and read it, and if they'd let me photocopy it, I would. If not, I'd make notes."[20]
After seeing the original Star Wars film in 1977, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.[21] When Cameron read Syd Field's book Screenplay, it occurred to him that integrating science and art was possible, and he wrote a ten-minute science fiction script with two friends, entitled Xenogenesis. They raised money and rented camera, lenses, film stock, and studio, and shot it in 35mm. To understand how to operate the camera, they dismantled it and spent the first half-day of the shoot trying to figure out how to get it running.
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