A lot of ink has been spilled discussing the immense pressure James Cameron must have felt after "Titanic" became the all-time box-office champ and then he didn't release any proper feature films. Now, just a few short weeks before Cameron's "Avatar" hits theaters, the filmmaker and his stars sat down with MTV for an exclusive live-stream Q&A. As they took questions from the fans, Sam Worthington gave thanks that all that attention on the director took the expectations off people like him.
"No," Worthington answered when asked whether he and co-star Zoe Saldana felt the weight of helping Cameron rise again. "None whatsoever."
He would know pressure. The 33-year-old Australian actor has spent the past year going from unknown to omnipotent thanks to blockbusters like "Terminator Salvation," "Avatar" and the recently wrapped remake of "Clash of the Titans." But to hear him tell it, Cameron's high-profile movie put the least amount of weight on him.
"The thing about Jim is that he's very protective of everyone involved on 'Avatar,' particularly me and Zoe," said Worthington, who plays space-traveling Marine Jake Sully in the film, tasked with colonizing a planet full of aliens. "So when you're making it, it's like you're in the eye of the hurricane — which is the calmest part, to a certain extent."
During the unending months of top-secret shooting all over the world, Worthington, Saldana and the other stars were shielded by Cameron; but now that the time has finally come to unveil the film and do interviews about it, the star jokingly admitted that they're finally starting to feel that pressure. "Now we're getting a bit of windburn as we stick our heads out," Worthington smiled, completing his hurricane analogy.
"But we stand by our product," he added, insisting the stars are proud of the December 18 flick. "We stand by the movie we've made.
"I was saying to Jim, you work on a movie so long, it's weird to hand it over. You make a movie to get seen; that's the whole point of making it, to tell these great stories. But we have to stand by what we've done. It's locked off," Worthington reasoned. "Now it's in the hands of the gods."
Check out everything we've got on "Avatar."
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