The unusual way James Cameron and Ed Harris resolved their feud: “There was no way for me to make it easier”
As a filmmaker who demands performative and technological perfection from his cast, crew, and even himself, James Cameron has inevitably become embroiled in several high-profile feuds during a career that’s been defined by repeatedly changing the face of cinema.
Very few auteurs have made it to the top of the industry without being tough taskmasters, and when his legacy has become so intertwined with pushing the medium forward, shattering records, and reaching new benchmarks that previously seemed unimaginable, Cameron has no issues ruffling a few feathers to get what he wants.
His most torturous production by far was The Abyss, which, in a dose of cruel irony, remains the last one of his movies to underperform at the box office. Being a Cameron picture, though, history was made when it helped lay the groundwork for the incoming CGI revolution that he himself would usher in when Terminator 2: Judgment Day became his next feature.
Cameron put his cast through the wringer to achieve maximum realism for the film’s underwater sequences, which pushed Ed Harris to the brink. The actor almost died when a set piece went wrong, and he was left in serious danger of drowning, which led to him reportedly punching the director in the face out of frustration.
Things got so bad that Harris broke down in tears on his way home from set, and he spent years refusing to talk about his experience on The Abyss. Needless to say, he hasn’t worked with Cameron since, and he probably never will, but at least the pair managed to settle their grudges in the most unusual of places.
Reflecting on the arduous shoot with Variety, Cameron admitted there were plenty of people who hated working on his sci-fi story, but fences can always be mended. “For me and Ed Harris, it was when our daughters were going to the same school,” he said. “We had to drop them off at the bus stop every morning, and we’d kind of stand there, like, ‘Hey Ed, how’s it going?’ We eventually wound up talking about it.”
The Avatar architect knows The Abyss was a nightmare, but he made a point of explaining that he was in exactly the same boat. “It was physically taxing for me and them; it was a tough shoot,” he continued. “There was no way for me to make it easier on everybody than what it was, other than to just not do it.”
The school run is a strange place to smooth over the lingering resentment that saw Harris endure one of the most miserable experiences of his life, and considering the actor’s only daughter was born in 1993, the timeline indicates that there was around a decade of bitterness between he and Cameron until they finally struck up a conversation at their kids’ shared bus stop.
