James Cameron rejected O.J. Simpson for ‘The Terminator’ role
It’s become part of Hollywood folklore that Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t entirely sold on playing the title role in The Terminator, even if he ended up making pure cinematic magic with James Cameron.
The aspiring superstar wasn’t only concerned that it was too early on his burgeoning film career to play a cold-blooded and remorseless villain that could see him typecast for years to come, but he also wasn’t thrilled by just how little dialogue the cybernetic organism from the future had in the script.
As tends to be the case more often than not, Cameron was right that the hulking former bodybuilder was perfectly suited to the role, and it remains the definitive part of Schwarzenegger’s entire career 40 years later. He wasn’t always the number one candidate, though, and it’s ironic that another name under consideration didn’t convince the production team because he was deemed as “too nice.”
Cameron relayed the story to Entertainment Weekly, with producer Mike Medavoy, the originator of the plan. “Medavoy came to me and Gale and he said, ‘Are you sitting down? You must sit down. I want O.J. Simpson for the Terminator and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the good guy, whatever his name is.’”
Beyond the irony of casting Simpson as a killing machine, given what lay in store in his future, Cameron didn’t fancy the optics, either. “Gale and I just looked at each other and thought, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,'” he continued. “Mind you, this was before O.J. was actually a killer. We might have reconsidered after he had killed his wife.”
“This was when everybody loved him, and ironically that was part of the problem. He was this likable, goofy, kind of innocent guy,” was Cameron’s thought process for why he wouldn’t be convincing, never mind the message it could have potentially portrayed. “Plus, frankly I wasn’t interested in an African-American man chasing around a white girl with a knife. It just felt wrong.”
As for Schwarzenegger, he had his eyes on the plum part of Kyle Reese before some gentle cajoling from Cameron convinced him that his hulking dimensions made him a much better fit for the title character. “I could visualize very clearly what the Terminator should look like,” the action icon said. “And so when I met Cameron to talk about Kyle Reese, I gave him all these points: This is what you should do with the Terminator, this is how the Terminator should act.”
He had a much better handle on the part he wasn’t even interested in, which sparked Cameron’s imagination into life. Just like that, Schwarzenegger was now the focal point of The Terminator, and it ended up taking his career to brand new heights, with his signature “I’ll be back” being deployed in countless films over the years as a result.
