Throughout his career, James Cameron has always pushed the boundaries of what is possible.
Academy Award®-winning director, writer, and producer James Cameron is one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood history. He has made three of the four highest-grossing movies of all time: Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009), and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), and he had a vision for making films important to him and unique to his storytelling approach from early in his career.
A native of Ontario, Canada, he loved both art and science from an early age. He moved to California in 1971 and studied physics and astronomy but dropped out in 1974 to work at various blue-collar jobs. While driving a truck for a living, he trained himself in visual effects by photocopying graduate dissertations at the USC library, though he wasn’t even enrolled there. When he saw Star Wars in 1977, James knew it was time to act. He landed a job with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, working on low-budget science-fiction films as a modeler, then art director and VFX cinematographer.
In 1984, James made his debut as a writer and director with his iconic science-fiction movie, The Terminator, about a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent from the future to eradicate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), a waitress destined to become the leader of a future resistance against the machines. His next film, Aliens (1986), received seven Oscar® nominations, including Best Actress for Sigourney Weaver. James then helmed The Abyss (1989), about an oil rig crew that encounters extraterrestrials living deep in the ocean. The film broke new ground with its computer-generated visual effects (which won the Academy Award).
In 1990, James founded his production company Lightstorm Entertainment, whose first film was Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which not only broke box-office records and won four Academy Awards but also continued to expand computer-generated imagery.
After writing and directing the hit action film True Lies, again with Schwarzenegger, James made movie history in 1997 with Titanic. The filmmaker set out to tell the story of the ill-fated ship’s sinking with unprecedented accuracy, including making 11 dives to film the wreck itself, 2½ miles down in the North Atlantic. Starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Titanic received a record 14 Oscar nominations, winning 11 (also a record), including James’ own for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. Titanic became the highest-grossing film of all time, a crown it would wear for a decade, until the release of his next film, Avatar, in 2009.
Produced for 20th Century Fox, this epic science fiction adventure introduced the humanoid Na’vi, who must battle the humans invading their home world of Pandora. Avatar was a quantum leap in performance capture and photorealistic CG creatures and characters. Like Titanic, Avatar became the highest-grossing film in history and remains so to this day, having made close to 3 billion dollars. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning three.
In 2011, James teamed up with Walt Disney Imagineering to create an Avatar-inspired land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom® Theme Park at Walt Disney World® Resort in Florida. The result: Pandora – The World of Avatar, an area that immerses guests in an all-encompassing environment, which brings the films to life, including through the popular attractions Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey.
Under his Earthship Productions banner, James has produced 12 documentaries, including six about Titanic, as well as three other deep ocean exploration films, most in partnership with National Geographic. He executive produces National Geographic’s Secrets of… series, and also executive produced the OceanXplorers series, due in Fall 2024 from National Geographic.
Not just a filmmaker, James is a recognized ocean explorer, having led eight deep diving expeditions, including several to hydrothermal vent sites around the world. For his last expedition, he piloted a submersible of his own design to become the first person to reach the deepest place in the world’s ocean, the East Pond of the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench. As a result, he became one of the prestigious National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence and was the 2013 National Geographic Explorer of the Year. He also served on the NASA Advisory Council and was a co-investigator on the building of the Mastcam camera for the Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring the surface of Mars.
Currently, James is directing three more Avatar sequels, which continue the story of Jake Sully and his family. Always the visionary, James sees them as more than a simple continuation. “These films are not only the epic story of Indigenous people fighting for their survival and the survival of the natural world, they form an emotional family saga, with characters we really care about.”