With a long list of box-office smash hits under his belt, James Cameron is the second-highest-earning director of all time. Spielberg takes the top spot, but Cameron still managed to earn a staggering $95 million in 2022. Part of this success comes from his huge payday for the highly successful Avatar: The Way of Water, which grossed $2 billion worldwide.
Cameron started as a truck driver and a janitor. On long drives, he’d think of ideas for screenplays, pulling over to write good ones down. In his off hours, he crammed books from university libraries, learning all he could about special effects. In an interview with Year One, he said of those early days: “I’d… pull any thesis that graduate students had written about optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology.” This slew of hard work eventually paid off, with Cameron getting his directorial debut in 1982, with a film titled Piranha II: The Spawning. Cameron was initially hired as special effects director, but after the firing of original director Miller Drake, Cameron suddenly found himself promoted to the top spot.
What is James Cameron’s net worth?
It wasn’t until 1984 that he scored his first big hit with the much-loved cult classic The Terminator (a movie that also propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger to international stardom). Further hits followed, including two more successful films with Arnie – Terminator II and True Lies. 1997 saw the release of the sensational Titanic, for which Cameron picked up three Oscars, as well as a newfound obsession for deep sea exploration. Cameron famously waived his $8 million paycheck for directing Titanic when the film ran over budget. Instead, he smartly took a cut of the film’s worldwide earnings, reportedly making a personal profit of $97 million — and that’s before factoring in recent re-releases.
All this money allowed Cameron to fund multiple production and special effects companies. In 2008, he was even responsible for designing the Fusion Camera System as a way to shoot in stereoscopic 3D. This type of camera has been used in multiple successful films, including Life of Pi.
Cameron is of course also known for his blockbuster sci-fi series, Avatar, which generates astounding amounts of cash for the multi-talented director. The first movie alone netted him approximately $350 million. Avatar: The Way of Water also continues to generate income for Cameron and has recently grossed over $2 billion worldwide. He currently has a net worth of $800 million and is set to become a billionaire, which doesn’t seem like a difficult milestone seeing that he has three more Avatar films on the way.