Cameron Says Schwarzenegger Wasn’t Who He Envisioned As Terminator
by Tim Lammers · ForbesThe Terminator director James Cameron says Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t exactly who he had in mind to play the now iconic movie character.
The sci-fi movie classic will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its domestic release on October 26. In the film, Schwarzenegger stars as the title character—aka the T-800—a cyborg from the future who travels back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of a future leader of a war against AI machines who have become self-aware.
In a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Cameron admitted that while Schwarzenegger isn’t the person he envisioned for the now-legendary role, he’s the reason for the longevity of the Terminator franchise.
“I think a lot of filmmakers, especially first-time filmmakers, get very, very stuck in a vision, because of insecurity,” Cameron told Empire. “I’m proud of the fact that we weren’t stuck enough to not be able to see how it could work with Arnold because it wasn’t our vision. Sometimes, when you look back from the vantage point — at this point 40 years — we could have made a great little film from a production-value standpoint, and it would have been nothing if we hadn’t made that one decision that captured the imagination of people.”
Cameron went on to direct Schwarzenegger again in 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Since then, the actor has reprised the role for various directors for the films Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).
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Cameron Says Simpson Was Never Considered To For ‘The Terminator’
In a 2023 interview with the eponymous host of Max’s talk show Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, James Cameron set the record straight about a persistent rumor over the decades about fallen NFL star running back O.J. Simpson being considered to play the Terminator.
During the interview with Cameron, Wallace asked the writer-director to explain how the supposed consideration of Simpson for the role began.
“Very early on, a highly placed person at one of the two studios that funded that film had a brilliant idea and called me up and said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I said, ‘Well, no, I’m not.’ He said, ‘Are you sitting? O.J. Simpson for the Terminator!’ I said, ‘I actually think that’s a bad idea.’ It didn’t go anywhere,” Cameron told Wallace (via Variety).
Ironically, Arnold Schwarzenegger was at least partially responsible for the Simpson casting rumor. Schwarzenegger told The Independent in 2019 during an interview for Terminator: Dark Fate that Simpson was originally cast to play the Terminator.
“It was actually O.J. Simpson that was the first cast Terminator and then somehow [James Cameron] felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine,” Schwarzenegger recalled in The Independent. “So, then they hired me. That’s really what happened.”
The rumored consideration, of course, took place long before Simpson’s arrest and eventual acquittal in connection with the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The former athlete-turned-actor was found liable for the deaths in a civil case in 1997.
Simpson died of cancer in April at age 76.