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Director Cameron Has Special Effect on Actors

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James Cameron--the man who brought the chameleonlike T-1000 to life in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” the man whose films have won three Oscars for special effects, the man whose avowed mission in his latest movie, “True Lies,” was to push special effects to their outermost limits--is, at heart, an actor’s director?

“He’s very demanding with actors,” says Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has starred in three Cameron movies, the two “Terminator” films and now “True Lies.” “He works to bring out your best qualities.”

Schwarzenegger, who has received increasingly encouraging reviews for his acting abilities since his “Hercules” and “Conan” days, says he tries to expand his acting chops every time out. “That’s why I pick the directors I do, and Jim helps me do everything better than I had done it before.

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“He makes it a challenge. For this film, the acting was more demanding,” says Schwarzenegger, who plays Harry Tasker, a super-spy who acts as a homebody around his unsuspecting family. “I had to learn languages, I had to take tango lessons. It took a lot of preparation for those things to look like they were second nature, but he wants to push you, and knows which buttons to push.”

Cameron himself says directing action sequences and working on special effects is “pretty grueling, and the only relief you have during the actual shooting are the simple moments with the actors. The scenes I have the most fun with are the dialogue scenes. That’s about the only place I have fun. . . . I can go home from shooting a dialogue or comic moment and feel not nearly as tense.

“Basically, I think I get along pretty well with actors,” Cameron says. “With a couple of exceptions, but any director has to cop to that. I’m harder on the crew--I’m never hard on the actors, because they have the hardest job on the picture. They’re the ones whose faces are up there and, in a way, have less control over the process than I do.”

As for Schwarzenegger’s abilities, Cameron says, “Arnold’s increasing his dexterity and his control. In this film, he shows a subtlety and a command we haven’t seen. I don’t know if he didn’t have it before, or whether no one asked him to do it. If you don’t ask, you ain’t gonna get it.

“In test screenings, people called this movie, in order, an action-comedy-romance. Some of them called it the ‘same old Arnold Schwarzenegger.’ But it really isn’t, because they’ve accepted a change in him--he’s never been a romantic lead before--and they’re not even aware of it.”

Cameron likewise had praise for Schwarzenegger’s co-stars, Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Tasker’s wife, Helen, and Tom Arnold, who appears as Tasker’s partner in covert activity, Gib. “Jamie has a natural comedic knack,” he says. “I always had my eye on her for the character. When I was writing it, I was thinking of her, I was actually having a hard time visualizing anyone else.

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“And Tom Arnold was a total surprise for me. I saw him with no expectations, or possibly even a negative expectation because he was a TV guy. And I had already seen 20 actors for that character, and was having real doubts about the way he was written. And Tom came in and popped every line, he got it.

“I don’t think people are willing to give him credit for being a fine actor. It’s interesting, (audiences) boo his credit when he comes on. But in the movie they love him. They’re going through the same surprise I went through when I cast him. Plus, all the stuff in his personal life is so resonant with his character.”

In the movie, Gib has been unlucky in love and has less than glowing thoughts about the institution of marriage. After the public breakup of his marriage with Roseanne, Cameron says, “He came back to me and said, ‘You know all those things I say? Now I understand ‘em!’ ”

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