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Biography
From the moment Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space
Odyssey was introduced to the eyes of the young
James Cameron, the director, screenwriter and
producer hasn't been able to keep his mind off of
filmmaking. The Hollywood filmmaker has written,
directed and produced many successful feature films,
including Avatar, Terminator, Titanic, Aliens and
True Lies, which
show what dreams are made of.
Date of
Birth:
August 16th, 1954
Sign:
Leo
Place of
Birth:
Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
Education:
California State University at Fullerton,
Physics, Switched to English.
Contact:
Bert Fields of
Greenberg, Fields, Claman & Machinger
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Tel.: 310-553-3610
Business Contact:
Lightstorm Entertainment
919 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401, USA
The
film industry is about saying ‘no’ to people,
and inherently you cannot take ‘no’ for an
answer.
From the moment Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was introduced to
the eyes of the young James Cameron, the director, screenwriter and
producer hasn't been able to keep his mind off of filmmaking. The
Hollywood filmmaker has written, directed and produced many successful
feature films, including Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens, which show what
dreams are made of.
James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada in 1954 but grew up
in Chippawa, a small town just outside of Niagara Falls, Ontario, where
demanding, disciplinarian parents, with whom he developed the creative
energy and tireless work ethic, raised him. His father Phillip Cameron,
was an electrical engineer and his mother, Shirley Cameron was an artist.
She encouraged her son to paint, and even helped arrange an exhibition for
him at a local gallery.
The young natural leader organized his playmates in such adventurous
endeavors as building a functional catapult that pitched boulders large
enough to make impact craters; on another occasion, he and his cohorts
created a miniature diving vessel to send mice to the bottom of Niagara
River.
In high school he wrote sci-fi stories and
fantasized a lot instead of doing his
homework.
An avid reader
of science fiction since childhood, he was
fifteen when he saw Stanley Kubrick's
visionary film, 2001: A Space Odyssey for
the first time. He became fascinated with
the whole motion picture process he
subsequently watched the film ten times. "As
soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to be a
filmmaker," explained Cameron, "It hit me on
a lot of different levels. I just couldn't
figure out how he did all that stuff, and I
just had to learn." And learn he did,
grabbing his father's Super-8 camera,
attempting to direct his own movies.
Not only did Cameron desperately try to
understand how motion pictures were made but
also he wrote sci-fi stories and fantasized
a lot instead of doing his homework. It was
actually during a biology class in high
school that Cameron wrote a short story,
which would later become the movie, The
Abyss.
Due to his father's job opportunities, the
family moved to Orange County. The excited
teen asked his father, "Los Angeles, isn't
that somewhere near Hollywood?" However, the
opportunities in Orange County were limited,
especially since Cameron didn't have a
driver's license.
"From a pragmatic standpoint, I could have
been in Montana. There is no film industry
in Orange County, and since I didn't have a
driver's license, it made Hollywood as far
away as another state."
"I couldn't see myself as a future film
director... those people were somehow born
into it. Little kids from a small town in
Canada didn't get to direct movies."
The dream of becoming a director seemed unrealistic,
as the young Cameron didn't believe it was possible.
"I couldn't see myself as a future film director. In
fact, there was a definite feeling on my part that
those people were somehow born into it, almost like
a caste system. Little kids from a small town in
Canada didn't get to direct movies."
Enrolling at a nearby college California State
University at Fullerton, Cameron decided to study
physics, "I liked science and I thought I might want
to be a marine biologist or physicist. But I also
liked to write, so I was pulled in a lot of
different directions. I liked the idea of an ocean,
even though I'd never seen or been in one. I loved
the idea of being in another world, and anything
that could transport me to another world is what I
was interested in."
He made the grades, yet still realized that science
was not a field of interest he wanted to pursue, he
switched his major to English, and began studying
literature for a while. Later making the decision
that either way he would not be happy, he decided to
drop out. Taking up several jobs, such as working in
a machine shop, being a truck driver, a school bus
driver, painting pictures, he continued to write at
night.
*The
FilmMakers Film Fund
will finance the production of all future film projects. The projects will be
made up of undiscovered Emerging artists in film including: screenwriters,
directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, music composers, first assistant
directors (AD), art directors, costume designers, production managers
(PM), etc.
Support our
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