5 True Lies about James Cameron

4. He's the real computer salesman, not Harry Tasker. Unlike the stunningly impressive liquid-metal-man of T2, the special effects in True Lies are supposed to be invisible. Realism was Cameron's goal this time out.

"I kept adding and adding shots," confesses the man who can never resist just one more fix. "I added 40 shots. There are no limitations to what you can do. Only money. The really scary thing for me is that the technology is so good now that you can do anything, put anybody anywhere. The next time you see video evidence, don't trust it. We can really do anything down at Digital Domain. The director is always God."

In the Harrier jet sequences, for example, the effects programmers removed cables and added billowing exhaust and whizzing missiles. The filmmakers blew up a model of the bridge (a sequence one studio exec estimates cost $2 million to $3 million alone) and filmed a truck that was supposed to cartwheel in the air, explode, and fall in the water — but didn't. "Nobody thought the damn truck would cartwheel across three collapsing spans and end up back on the bridge," recalls Cameron. "I had already shot the full-size coverage on the bridge and there was no truck there, so we digitally put in the truck on the far side of the bridge for three shots. It probably cost $10,000 to $12,000, but it was cheaper than [reshooting]."

Cameron also edited a close-up he liked of Eliza Dushku, who plays Harry and Helen's teenage daughter, from one scene into another — and when her clothes didn't match, he changed her shirt digitally. In another sequence, in which Harry's sidekick, played by Tom Arnold, watches terrorist Aziz (Art Malik) in a dark rearview mirror, Cameron added a burning cigarette ash to help show that the terrorist was still there. "The digital-house people would say they weren't sure they could do something," recalls cinematographer Carpenter. "Jim would say, 'I don't care — do it!' They were flogged into doing beautiful work."

Cameron is the first to appreciate the irony that when True Lies was finally previewed, the scene audiences liked best featured no special effects: It was Curtis' bump-and-grind striptease, which evolved out of rehearsals. Jokes Cameron, "I could have saved a lot of money."

5. He likes strong women — especially fictional ones. Cameron wrote True Lies with Jamie Lee Curtis in mind. The two had met in 1988 on the set of Kathryn Bigelow's police thriller, Blue Steel. "I never find it hard to write female characters," he says. "I project myself into the situation, and then another part of my mind says, 'Women see things differently, they create life,' and it has to be modified.

"I didn't know how Jamie and Arnold would get along," he recalls. "Arnold loves to goose people when he first meets them. Jamie goosed right back and they were off. There's a chemistry about them together. They're both totally vulgar."

One of Cameron's strengths as a writer has been his ability to create tough heroines who don't turn men off — witness Linda Hamilton in T2 and Sigourney Weaver, whom Cameron directed to an Oscar nomination in Aliens. At one point in True Lies, Curtis grabs an Uzi to protect her beleaguered husband, and in one of the film's biggest gags, plenty of terrorists die but their blood is not on her hands. "I wanted the classic moment where the girl picks up the gun and goes to war," says Cameron, "but I didn't want her to kill anybody. It was a way of having my cake and eating it, too." (In fact, reaction to Helen Tasker has been divided, with some critics praising her as a comic variation on past Cameron heroines, and others faulting Cameron for a humiliating depiction of the character.)

Cameron, who grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, credits his mother, Shirley, an artist and a nurse, for his attraction to independent women. (His father, Phillip, was an engineer.) "Mom was always a fighter," he recalls. "She never took guff from anybody. There was a practical yet nurturing aspect, and an artistic aspect. Plus, she was a mom, she raised five kids, which made her a military leader as well."

It isn't a stretch to see Cameron's double life in the Taskers' story. "I had a daughter 16 months ago and I haven't seen her nearly as much as I would have wanted. It's a big strain."

That strain didn't help his marriage to producer Gale Anne Hurd (who cowrote Terminator and produced Aliens and The Abyss) or his marriage to director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break), either. After Cameron's breakup with Bigelow, who is now directing the futuristic erotic thriller Strange Days for his company, he got together with Linda Hamilton. But about six months ago she moved into her own place with their baby girl, Josephine Archer Cameron. "We like it better that way," Cameron insists. "She's very tough and independent — that's what I like about her. How can I celebrate that and try to change that at the same time? It's a classic dilemma."

Of his two ex-wives (with whom he remains on good terms), he says, "They were both film professionals, both as workaholic as I am. If you're in a relationship with someone who understands the drive because they're driven, then you run the risk of driving in different directions. All my movies are about something I've experienced."

Cameron admits that the rigorous two years he spent on True Lies has exhausted him, and insists he won't start on preproduction for his next ambitious epic, Spiderman, for a few months. "I need a rest," he says. "I'd like to be around for my daughter's graduation. I probably won't be alive in 17 years, as fast as I'm moving."