James Cameron Regrets The "Cringeworthy" Oscar Speech He Gave For TITANIC

James Cameron’s Titanic won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture at the 1998 Academy Awards and Cameron jumped up on stage to give his speech, saying: "There is no way that I can express to you what I’m feeling right now. My heart is full to bursting, except to say, 'I'm the king of the world.'"

Well, Cameron is looking back at his speech and it’s now something he regrets and calls “cringeworthy.” While discussing this with CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?, he explained:

"What I learned is you don’t quote your own movie to the Academy if you win, because it’s cringeworthy. It makes the assumption that you didn’t win by a narrow margin, but that every single person sitting in the audience on that night at the Kodak Theatre saw and loved Titanic. And we’ll never know how much we won by, but it might not have been a landslide at all."

Cameron went on to share that he "took flack for 25 years" for his comments. He also added: "You do have to be careful what you say in your acceptance speech, me and Sally Field, we have a little self-help group together on this."

Yeah, it was a cheesy moment, but you know what? He had just won an Oscar for Best Picture! He was excited and out of all the things he could have said in that moment, quoting his own film with “I’m the king of the world!” wasn’t the worst thing he could have said. The speech was actually pretty boring until that moment.

As for the reference he makes regarding Sally Field, she was criticized for her Places in the Heart speech in 1985 when she said in her speech, "I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me."