“I had many, many people trying to buy that script, but I wouldn’t sell unless I went with it as the director. Initially, I didn’t really want Arnold. I’ll never forget telling my roommate, ‘I’ve got to go have lunch with Conan and pick a fight with him’.

That was my agenda: to get in an argument and come back and say he was an asshole. But he was so charming and so into the script. Even though he made me smoke a cigar that made me sick for six hours.

Funny thing was he even had to pay for lunch, because I was this loser who didn’t have any money. Casting him shouldn’t have worked. The guy is supposed to be an infiltration unit and there’s no way you wouldn’t spot a Terminator in a crowd if it looked like Arnold.

But that’s the beauty of movies. If there’s a visceral, cinematic thing happening that the audience likes, they don’t care if it goes against what’s likely.”

Effect On Avatar: Cameron enjoys sci-fi success on a relatively small budget, paving the way for carte blanche cheque-writing.