The crazy story of how James Cameron saved Guillermo Del Toro’s father’s life from a kidnapping
Sometimes life imitates art in ways that are eerie and unforgiving. As prophesied elegantly by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, most art holds a mirror up to nature. But what he didn’t say is that sometimes, nature can hold a mirror right back.
The world of film can often surpass reason. No one knows this better than Guillermo del Toro, the director behind the likes of 2025’s Frankenstein, 2017’s The Shape of Water, and 2013’s Pacific Rim. His stories deal with wild, ghastly, and often gothic tales of love, tragedy, fear, memory, and the monstrous. Many know he is at the top of the game. Only a few know that del Toro has an awful, mind-blowing story of his own to pull such personal musings from…one that could have easily come from a film.
In 1997, the director was still trying to prove his worth in a cut-throat industry. He spent most of his money on Mimic, a sci-fi horror movie about an entomologist who creates a genetically engineered insect to kill cockroaches carrying a deadly disease. The creators eventually evolve into massive predators that mimic human form and begin hunting people.
Something more sinister than hunter insects came for del Toro, though. Around the time the film was finished, the filmmaker’s father, Federico, was kidnapped. He tried fruitlessly to come up with the money to pay the ransom and save his father, but fell considerably short. All the money had gone on the funny insects. One doesn’t often have emergency funds just in case a kidnapping happens, do they? Luckily for him, one director was willing to lend a hand: James Cameron.
The director of Titanic and The Terminator had befriended del Toro earlier that decade. He didn’t pay the sum outright, but provided him with the funds for a hostage negotiator. From there, it took 72 agonising days until his father was released. Cameron did get his funds back, as del Toro insisted on reimbursing him, but if he hadn’t been able to step up when the time was tough, things would’ve gone from bad to worse.
Cameron wasn’t asked to do this. He heard flutterings of word on the street and took charge, contacting del Toro only to say that the hostage negotiator could be expected in 72 hours. He even offered to pay the ransom sum initially, but del Toro and his family refused to ask for that much from the iconic filmmaker.
There’s a sprinkling of this story in his 2001 project, The Devil’s Backbone. The picture follows Carlos, a 12-year-old boy, who is admitted to an orphanage after his father’s execution. The plot sees his life unravel after he makes a horrid discovery by lifting the veil on the tragic secrets of the school. Here we see a director investigating what might have happened if his father’s fate were different. What might have happened if Cameron hadn’t been there to save the day?
Forget the door scene in the Titanic, where Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, saves Rose’s life after the ship sank; maybe Cameron is the real hero after all.
