James Cameron Recalls How He 'Survived' After Nearly Drowning While Filming “The Abyss” Underwater

James Cameron told an audience at a special screening of 'The Abyss' that his oxygen tank once ran out without warning while he was filming 30 feet underwater

James Cameron is recalling a scary experience he had while filming underwater scenes for his 1989 movie The Abyss.

Cameron, 69, appeared at the film festival Beyond Fest at Regency Westwood Village in Los Angeles on Wednesday for a special edition screening of The Abyss. During the Q&A, the filmmaker said that he almost died during production on the film, which required lead actors Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn, among others, to perform their scenes while actually scuba diving, per Variety.

“We had the ‘angels,’ which were the safety divers that were right there, and each one was assigned to one or two of the actors and just kept them in sight the whole time," Cameron told the audience, per the outlet. "[But] they weren’t watching me.”

The Oscar winner, who is an experienced diver himself, told the crowd that he was filming scenes 30 feet underwater and "wore heavy weights around my feet, no fins, a heavy weight belt around my waist," in order to move the camera.

Cameron recalled that at one point, his oxygen tank ran out of air while "everybody’s setting lights and nobody’s watching me."

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"I’m trying to get [underwater director of photography] Al Giddings attention on the p.a. but Al had been involved in a diving accident and he blew out both eardrums so he was deaf as a post," he said. "And I’m wasting my last breath of air on an underwater p.a. system going ‘Al… Al…’ and he’s working away with his back to me.”

The director then said that he was able to remove his equipment and began to resurface when a safety diver on the production "sticks a regulator in my mouth that he didn’t check."

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"It had been banging around the bottom of the tank for three weeks and had a rip through the diaphragm — so I purged carefully and took a deep breath… of water," Cameron said, per Variety. "And then I purged it again, and I took another deep breath… of water.”

“At that point it was almost check-out point and the safety divers are taught to hold you down so you don’t embolize and let your lungs over expand going up. But I knew what I was doing," he added. "And he wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to tell him the regulator wasn’t working. So I punched him in the face and swam to the surface and therefore survived.”

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The Abyss, which also costarred Leo Burmester, Todd Graff, Kimberly Scott and J.C. Quinn, won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 1990 Oscars. The film predated Cameron's other explorations — and massive successes — with water on the big screen in movies like 1997's Titanic and most recently in last year's Avatar sequel, The Way of Water.

Cameron recalled at the Q&A that The Abyss's underwater creatures provided moments "that certainly caught people's attention at the time."

"That scene made an impact and showed people what was possible and I think it kicked in the door to the start of the CG explosion," he said, per Variety.

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