James Cameron has revealed that he regrets quoting from Titanic when he won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1998.
The Avatar: The Way of Water director has been reflecting on his career, after the long-awaited sequel to 2009’s Avatar dropped in cinemas in December.
Despite his staggering success as director of two of the highest-grossing movies of all time, Cameron says there is one memory about Titanic’s accolades that makes him cringe.
At the Oscars in 1998, the movie swept up eleven awards including Best Director when Cameron said he didn’t have the words to express his joy, so instead he quoted Jack’s line from the film: "I’m the King of the world!"
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In a recent interview, Cameron opened up on the backlash to that comment as many creatives took his comment to show his arrogance, as opposed to his excitement.
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"I was trying to express the joy and excitement that I was feeling in terms of that movie – and the most joyful moment for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Titanic character was when he was free and at the bow of the ship," Cameron told Chris Wallace on his HBO series, Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.
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Cameron added that he would never make that same error again. He continued: "What I learned is you don’t quote your own movie to the Academy if you win, because it’s cringeworthy."
"It makes the assumption that you didn’t win by a narrow margin, but that every single person sitting in the audience on that night at the Kodak Theatre saw and loved Titanic. And we’ll never know how much we won by, but it might not have been a landslide at all."
Cameron also reflected on how those Academy Award speeches seem to live forever, and give other professionals in the industry a pre-conceived idea about you.
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He said: "I took flack for all 25 years after that. You do have to be careful what you say in your acceptance speech, me and Sally Field, we have a little self-help group together on this."
The director was referring to Field’s win in 1985 for Places in the Heart, when she declared: "I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!"
Avatar: The Way of Water is now playing in cinemas worldwide. The first film is streaming on Disney+.
![Avatar Extended Collector's Edition [Blu-ray]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1665650766-51Fc2LeVmTL._SL500_.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:* "Avatar Extended Collector's Edition [Blu-ray]")
Jess is a freelance writer and editor with a passion for over-analysing everyone’s favourite movies and TV shows. As an English graduate from the University of York with an MA in Creative Writing, Jess worked as a magazine editor before turning freelance. Since then, Jess has written for outlets such as GQ, The Guardian, Inverse, Huff Post, Stylist, and Insider. She specialises in the representation of mental health, grief, and women in film. She’s also a major Marvel nerd and is writing a YA fantasy novel. LinkedIn
