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James Cameron has revealed what led him and his family to leave the US for New Zealand.
The “Titanic” director, 71, opened up about the surprising decision during a new episode of “In Depth with Graham Besinger” released on Wednesday.
Cameron, who officially became a New Zealand citizen this past August, began by explaining how he “just really fell in love with” the country and its people when he first visited in 1994.
But it wasn’t until 11 years after he married his fifth and current wife, Suzy Amis, in 2000 – and two years after the release of the first “Avatar” movie in 2009 – that the filmmaker pulled the trigger and purchased a farm in New Zealand.
“When Suzy and I were first getting serious, she said, ‘Fine, no problem.’ She was game,” he shared. “Now, later, we have children, we have a family, we’ve got roots in Malibu and Santa Barbara, that conversation had to be amended slightly, but we did say after ‘Avatar,’ let’s make this happen.”
The “True Lies” director and Amis, 64, share three daughters: Claire, 23, Quinn, 21, and Elizabeth, 18. He also shares a fourth daughter, Josephine, 31, from his relationship with his second wife, Linda Hamilton.
Cameron, his wife and their three kids spent significant time “going back and forth” between the US and New Zealand between 2011 and when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020.
Although he was still working on 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” at the time, he and Amis decided to “make the move as a family” that August because of how New Zealand responded to the pandemic versus the US.
“New Zealand had eliminated the virus completely,” the “Terminator” director, who was born in Canada but moved to California in 1971, told Besinger. “They actually eliminated the virus twice. The third time when it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through. But fortunately, they already had a 98% vaccination rate.”
“This is why I love New Zealand,” he continued. “People there are, for the most part, sane as opposed to the United States, where you had a 62% vaccination rate, and that’s going down – going the wrong direction.”
Cameron went on to praise New Zealand’s appreciation for science and suggested that the US would fall apart if another pandemic occurred.
“Where would you rather live?” the Oscar-winning director asked. “A place that actually believes in science and is sane, and where people can work together cohesively to a common goal?”
He continued, “Or a place where everybody’s at each other’s throats, extremely polarized, turning its back on science and basically would be in utter disarray if another pandemic appears?”
After Bensinger argued that the US is a “fantastic place to live” but acknowledged New Zealand’s natural beauty, the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” filmmaker doubled down on his decision to leave one for the other.
“I’m not there for scenery,” he said. “I’m there for the sanity.”
Cameron previously opened up about his preference for New Zealand over the US last year, shortly before he was granted New Zealand citizenship.
“It means a lot. It’s something I’ve worked toward, something I’ve had to sacrifice for,” he told the New Zealand outlet Stuff at the time.
“If you’re going to uproot your family and move somewhere, you have to invest, you have to be part of it, you have to earn standing,” Cameron added. “I just think you’ve got to earn your right to be in a place.”