It’s been 12 years, and the “Avatar” director still feels the burn.

James Cameron blasts Amy Poehler’s Golden Globes joke about his marriage as an ‘ignorant dig’ that ‘went too far’

It's been 12 years, and the "Avatar" director still feels the burn.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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December 22, 2025 7:50 p.m. ET

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James Cameron; Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Credit:

Victoria Sirakova/Getty; Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty

James Cameron is not ready to make nice.

The *Avatar: Fire and Ash *director looked back on the highs, lows, and many phases of his storied Hollywood career in a recent interview with the *New York Times*. Touching on his reputation as an exacting, demanding, sometimes even difficult director to work with, Cameron offered rare comments about a joke made at an awards show that still stings over a decade later.

"I haven't really been following the controversy over *Zero Dark Thirty*," Amy Poehler said from the stage of the 2013 Golden Globes, where that film's director and Cameron's ex, Kathryn Bigelow, was up for the Best Director trophy. "But when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron."

The Canadian filmmaker stayed mum at the time about Poehler's wisecrack, which drew shocked laughter from the audience. But he now looks back on the joke as "an ignorant dig."

James Cameron directing Trinity Bliss, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, and Sigourney Weaver on the set of 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'.

Mark Fellman/20th Century Studios

"I'm pretty thick-skinned, and happy to be the butt of a good-natured joke, but that went too far," Cameron explained. Especially "at an event which is supposed to be a celebration of cinema and filmmakers, not a roast."

For Cameron, it wasn't so much the joke itself that stung, but the reaction it elicited from the audience — a packed auditorium of his peers. "The fact that people found it funny shows exactly what they think of me, even though they have no idea who I am or how I work," he said.******

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Reports have circulated in the past suggesting that Cameron is a difficult or otherwise unpleasant force to be driving the forward action of a film. He told biographer Rebecca Keegan for her 2009 book *The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron *that despite a "few bright lights among the younger art department people" on the set of 1986's *Aliens*, the crew was generally "lazy, insolent, and arrogant."

"For the most part, we despised them and they despised us," he said.

The crew of his 1989 sci-fi thriller *The Abyss *even took to wearing T-shirts on set emblazoned with the message, "You can't scare me, I work for Jim Cameron."**

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Some of Cameron's closest collaborators have enthused about the very same qualities that others seem to single out for criticism. Kate Winslet, who reteamed with Cameron on *Avatar: The Way of Water *26* *years after first making *Titanic *together, observed in 2022, "A chef is never gonna send a great dish out to the table if he's not happy with that plate."

She described first encountering the sequel script as "a phenomenal experience reading a Jim Cameron script because it's just so thorough. The guy is such a perfectionist."**

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