James Cameron, the blockbuster king behind Avatar and Titanic, has made a life-altering decision, and the reasons why feel deeply personal, painfully honest, and rooted in something bigger than Hollywood or box office numbers.
The 71-year-old filmmaker recently opened up on In Depth with Graham Bensinger about permanently relocating his family to New Zealand — a place he’s loved for decades but only recently committed to as home. And while some celebs flee LA for privacy or tax reasons, Cameron’s explanation cuts straight into the anxiety many people have quietly been carrying since 2020.
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Cameron first set foot in New Zealand back in 1994, long before Pandora ever existed. During his interview this week with host Graham Bensinger, he recalled a moment that stuck with him all these years later:
“I made myself a promise. ‘I’m going to come live here someday.’ … Ijust really fell in love with [the country and its people].”
That seed was planted early, but life, work, and family made it complicated. He and wife Suzy Amis Cameron (pictured with Cameron, above), whom he married in 2000, built roots in California while raising their three children. As Cameron explained, the dream didn’t disappear, it just had to wait:
“When Suzy and I were first getting serious, she said, ‘Fine, no problem.’ She was game. Now, later, we have children, we have a family, we’ve got roots in Malibu and Santa Barbara, that conversation had to be amended slightly, but we did say after Avatar, let’s make this happen.”
He bought a farm in New Zealand in 2011 and spent years bouncing back and forth while working on Avatar sequels. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, everything crystallized. In August 2020, the Camerons made the move as a family, and it wasn’t a temporary escape:
“New Zealand had eliminated the virus completely. They actually eliminated the virus twice. The third time when it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through. But fortunately, they already had a 98% vaccination rate. This is why I love New Zealand. People there are, for the most part, sane as opposed to the United States where you had a 62% vaccination rate, and that’s going down — going the wrong direction.”
Cameron didn’t shy away from how stark the contrast felt to him. He posed a question that sounded less hypothetical and more like a warning:
“Where would you rather live? A place that actually believes in science and is sane and where people can work together cohesively to a common goal, or a place where everybody’s at each other’s throats, extremely polarized, turning its back on science and basically would be in utter disarray if another pandemic appears.”
When Bensinger pushed back, calling the US a “fantastic” place to live, Cameron’s response was quiet but devastating:
“Is it?”
And when the conversation drifted to New Zealand’s jaw-dropping landscapes, Cameron clarified that beauty wasn’t the deciding factor:
“I’m not there for scenery, I’m there for the sanity.”
Damn.
Cameron’s full interview with Bensinger airs in syndication this weekend, and Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now.
Watch more (below):
Thoughts, y’all?
[Image via WENN]
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