James Cameron in for a titanic battle with ex-wife over Oscars prize

He is the most successful man in Hollywood, responsible for the two most lucrative films in cinema history. And now only one thing stands between James Cameron and his chance to win the Oscar for Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards: his former wife.




Yes, this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, the nominations for which will be announced tomorrow morning, could get a bit awkward.



Cameron, 55, has long been seen as the obvious favourite to win Hollywood’s top honour for his epic 3-D science fiction movie Avatar, which recently beat Titanic — also directed by Cameron — to become the highest-earning film in cinema history (global box-office takings currently stand just shy of £1.25 billion).



But then along came his former partner, Kathryn Bigelow, who last year made a low-profile Iraq war thriller, The Hurt Locker. Unlike Avatar, The Hurt Locker cost relatively little to make — at £9 million its budget was about a twentieth of Avatar’s — and it did not break any box-office records. Indeed, it barely broke even from box- office receipts. But The Hurt Locker differed from Avatar in another way, too: it won praise for more than its special effects.



Related Links

How does James Cameron do it?

James Cameron back in at the deep end

Many critics have already declared the work to be a classic, on a par with such Vietnam-era masterpieces as Full Metal Jacket. What’s more, The Hurt Locker, which stars Jeremy Renner as a bomb disposal expert, has become the first financially successful Iraq film since the 2003 invasion, suggesting that the American public have finally managed to get some emotional detachment from the subject matter.



Despite all this, Bigelow, who is three years older than her former husband, initially was not seen as a serious Oscar contender at this year’s ceremony, especially after Avatar’s dominance at last month’s Golden Globe awards. But then came the Directors’ Guild Awards on Saturday night, at which she unexpectedly prevailed. Now all bets for the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7 are off — especially given that in all but six times over the past 61 years the winner at the Directors’ Guild Awards has gone on to take the Best Director honour on Oscars night.



“I am so deeply stunned and honoured and proud,” said Bigelow after collecting her award at Saturday’s ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, near Beverly Hills. “I think we all felt a really deep responsibility to tell this story with as much honesty as possible, given the courage of the men and women in the field.”



Cameron and Bigelow were together for two years before their divorce in 1991, with Ms Bigelow being his third wife (Cameron's previous two partners had been a waitress and producer respectively).The two are now reportedly friends, despite Cameron going on to marry the female lead of his Terminator films, Linda Hamilton, before again divorcing and then marrying another actress, Suzy Amis.



By most accounts, Cameron has a dominating personality, and his style of leadership has included nailing the mobile phones of crew members to the wall. But he claims to have mellowed over recent years, and there is little indication that a win for his ex-wife at the Academy Awards would cause a fallout: after all, the first thing that Bigelow did after getting The Hurt Locker script was to show it to her ex-husband. Cameron said: “I encouraged her to do The Hurt Locker, because she had gotten that script and let me read it just for comment.”



Perhaps he might have toned down his enthusiasm had he known that his former spouse’s film may cost him the ultimate Hollywood triumph.



For the time being Cameron can console himself with the fact that he already has three Oscars on his mantlepiece — for Best Director, Best Editing and Best Picture — all of them claimed during Titanic’s 1998 sweep. Even after Saturday night’s upset, his ex-wife is unlikely to beat that.