Never doubt Big Jim, not even when it comes to the life-saving measures required to save a helpless rat from peril.
In a recent interview with James Hibberd for The Hollywood Reporter, James Cameron, whose latest Avatar entry hits theaters this month, recalled a briefly harrowing moment involving a rat on the set of his 1989 Oscar winner The Abyss.
The rat, known as Beanie, would have drowned were it not for the decades-strong filmmaking legend, who stepped in to rescue his new friend from certain doom with some timely CPR.
“Beanie and I bonded over the whole thing,” Cameron said of the rat, whose drowning during the shoot would have stripped the film of its coveted No Animals Were Harmed certification. “I saved his life. We were brothers. He used to sit on my desk while I was writing Terminator 2, and he lived to a ripe old age. He didn’t seem particularly traumatized, though I know the film is outlawed in the UK because of ‘animal cruelty.’“
The Abyss, written and directed by Cameron, stars Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as an estranged married couple among those who encounter a mysterious and otherworldly presence during an underwater mission. It’s one of numerous must-see entries in Cameron’s filmography. (And while it's not fully banned in the UK, it has been censored over the rat scene.)
As the Reporter points out, Cameron’s rat rescue was previously mentioned in The Futurist, Rebecca Keegan’s 2009 book about the filmmaker.
Fire and Ash, the third film in Cameron’s wildly successful Avatar franchise, hits theaters on Friday (Dec. 19). Plans for additional sequels are well-documented, though Cameron has more recently flirted with the possibility of the third film being the final entry in the series.