James Cameron has revealed that he almost "hit" Harvey Weinstein with an Oscar after the pair came to blows during the Academy Awards in 1998, the year his hit movie Titanic scooped eleven awards.
The critically acclaimed director said that he confronted the disgraced movie mogul after hearing of the Weinstein Company’s poor treatment of his friend and fellow director, Guillermo del Toro.
Speaking to Vanity Fair the Avatar filmmaker conceded there were probably a lot of people "that would've preferred I had played through on that one," now that Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by a number of women.
"I remember almost getting in a fight with Harvey Weinstein and hitting him with my Oscar," he recalled.
"It was happening on the main floor at the (theatre)... and the music had started to play to get back in our seats. The people around us were saying, 'Not here. Not here'. Like it was OK to fight in the parking lot, you know, but it was not OK there when the music was playing, and they were about to go live."
The argument was about Weinstein's treatment of Del Toro when they worked together on Mimic.
"Harvey came up glad-handing me, talking about how great they were for the artist, and I just read him chapter and verse about how great I thought he was for the artist based on my friend's experience, and that led to an altercation," Cameron added.
Mexican director Del Toro said at the BFI London Film Festival last month that working with Harvey and Bob Weinstein on the 1997 sci-fi ilm nearly ended his Hollywood ambitions.
"I have got to tell you, two horrible things happened in the late nineties, my father was kidnapped and I worked with the Weinsteins," he said.
Lawyers for Harvey Weinstein, 65, have said he denies ever acting criminally and said he never engaged in any non-consensual sexual conduct.
