James Cameron

The top-tiered action director of his generation, as well as one of the most allegedly demanding and difficult, James Cameron reshaped 1980s and '90s Hollywood with a string of lucrative multimillion-dollar films remarkable for their marriage of technical wizardry and human sentiment. Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic exemplified this union of elements, as one of the highest-grossing motion pictures in the history of the medium. It also netted its director a dazzling array of international awards including the 1997 Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

The son of an electrical engineer, Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, on August 16, 1954. He was was fascinated with movies from a young age and would later cite Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as an early influence. Thanks to his father's job, Cameron and his family moved to southern California in 1971, and the director studied physics at California State University. Following his graduation,...