James Cameron Biography by FilmMakers Magazine

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.