LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 8: O. J. Simpson sits in Superior Court in Los Angeles 08 December 1994 ... [+]
Terminator director James Cameron says Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL star O.J. Simpson’s name was pitched to him by a studio executive to star in the 1984 film that sparked a blockbuster franchise featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Simpson — who died Wednesday of cancer at age 76 — became infamous in 1995 after being acquitted of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman in 1994. But long before his high-profile criminal trial — and subsequent civil case in 1997 where he was found liable for the deaths — Simpson earned fame as an NFL star who made a successful transition into film acting.
Simpson, who launched his 35-year acting career in his college years, co-starred in the blockbuster movies The Towering Inferno (1974) and Capricorn One (1978), as well as the Naked Gun trilogy.
In a 2023 interview with the eponymous host of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace (via Variety), Cameron denied claims that Schwarzenegger made in a 2019 interview with The Independent about how Simpson was originally cast to play the killer cyborg.
The writer-director did say, however, that Simpson was the subject of a studio executive’s pitch to star in the movie.
“Very early on, a highly placed person at one of the two studios that funded that film had a brilliant idea and called me up and said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I said, ‘Well, no, I’m not.’ He said, ‘Are you sitting? O.J. Simpson for the Terminator!’ I said, ‘I actually think that’s a bad idea.’ It didn’t go anywhere,” Cameron told Wallace.
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of "Terminator". (Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ... [+]
Schwarzenegger Says Cameron Thought Simpson Was Not A Believable Killing Machine
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s claims of O.J. Simpson being cast in The Terminator began in 2019 during his interview with The Independent while promoting Terminator: Dark Fate.
“It was actually O.J. Simpson that was the first cast Terminator and then somehow [James Cameron] felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine,” Schwarzenegger told The Independent. “So, then they hired me. That’s really what happened.”
Schwarzenegger also mentioned that a unique piece of Cameron artwork that he owns has a connection to his claims about Simpson’s casting.
“On the painting that I have at home – it was painted by Jim Cameron — underneath my face is actually O.J. Simpson’s face,” Schwarzenegger told The Independent. “It was already painted on it, with the leather jacket and the gun in the hand, a 45. And I have that painting in my office. If anyone would ever scrape off part of my face— which I don’t think anyone would do — [they would see it]. That’s the wild thing about the whole thing.”
In addition to starring in various Hollywood projects, Simpson was the subject of some of them. Cuba Gooding Jr. played Simpson in 2016’s American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, an FX series that chronicled Simpson’s 1995 murder case.
Simpson’s life was also chronicled in the expansive 2016 documentary O.J.: Made in America, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
