James Cameron – Self-Made Director

I first learned about James Cameron when the first part of the Terminator Franchise, Terminator, was released in 1984.  It is not often that fans pay attention to movie directors, but the film was written and directed by the same person, and this moved me to investigate the story behind it.

Meanwhile, he worked on the Piranha Franchise sequel, he had a dream from which he created an alien cyborg sent from the future to prevent the birth of John Conner, the man who would be able to defeat the aliens.

The movie presented excellent graphics that were convincing enough to draw my attention. What I discovered about Cameron then, inspired me even more. Although he moves around with some of the top college-educated colleagues, he dropped out of high school, even though he eventually completed a GED.

Cameron started a trucking job, but in his spare time, he visited the library and studied graphics and filming. He became good at what he did and created his first test movie with one of his friends. He went on to say that it was like a doctor doing his first surgical procedure.

However, his first real job was as an art director for Roger Corman’s Studios, in the making of the movie Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). In 1982 he wrote the script for Terminator (1984), which he wanted to sell so he could direct it as well. He had little success until he met one of his former wives who bought the script for US$1, with the condition that he directed the film.

Cameron chose Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that his bodybuilder body was more fitting for the cyborg. The film met great critical and commercial success with a worldwide box office of over US$78 million.  The media critics showered him with applause. the BBC, a British company, lauded Cameron’s direction, writing “Cameron laces the action with ironic jokes, but never lets up on hinting that the terror may strike at any moment”.

And later on, the film would become protected by the US Government. In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

About James Cameron

James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1964, and is the eldest of five children. He is a Canadian scriptwriter and director who educated himself in the film industry.

Cameron continued the Terminator franchise before losing it, with Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). He sprung to international glory with the film and become an icon with the 1997 epic romance Titanic, for which he won three Academy Awards, the movie being nominated for 14, and winning eleven.

The movie went on to make worldwide box office history establishing itself as the highest-grossing film of all time, with an income of US$2.19 billion. Titanic would hold the record for ten years until 2017 when another Cameron film, Avatar, replaced it with a worldwide box office of US$2.91 billion.

James Cameron has proven that anything is possible, even for the self-educated. He has become one of the highest-grossing directors of all time with more than US$8 billion in worldwide box office gross.