“To me, he was the quintessential man, expressing the male values I admire - strength, honesty, a sense of duty, conviction,” Cameron writes in an email from the New Zealand set of his Avatar sequels. When he came in to read, he stood out instantly to Cameron.
Biehn, then in his mid-20s, was already making $100,000 a year thanks to steady work in commercials, TV and films. The Fan turned out to be a dud, but as luck would have it, The Terminator was around the corner. It was a thriller titled The Fan (1981), in which he played a young man obsessed with a stage star, played by Lauren Bacall.
Limato, who died in 2010, believed Biehn could be a big star, and a few years before Terminator, the agent landed him a film they believed could be his big break. His chiseled face helped Biehn land Limato, the powerful Hollywood agent who repped Denzel Washington, Richard Gere and Mel Gibson during his career.
… I find it ridiculous.”Īsk anyone who knew Biehn in the 1980s, and one of the first things they’ll mention is his good looks. Speaking of those earlier overtures, Biehn notes: “There is no way I was going to come in and do a cameo on any Terminator movie.
But like his Terminator contemporaries - Hamilton and Cameron - Biehn has been approached over the years for the series of ill-fated Terminator installments. His character, Kyle Reese, died at the end of 1984’s The Terminator, so his inclusion in Dark Fate wouldn’t necessarily make sense. Even Edward Furlong, who disappeared from Hollywood after personal and legal issues, reprises his role as John Connor for the first time since T2.īut Biehn, apparently, will not be back. Cameron returns as producer to the franchise for the first time since Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Terminator is set to unleash its sixth installment in November with Terminator: Dark Fate, which sees much of the original gang back together. And Biehn, 63, is best known for their collaborations, which include Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989). The Oscar-winning Cameron is the biggest filmmaker in the world. Now, nearly 35 years after it opened, Terminator is one of the most influential sci-fi franchises in history. “It didn’t have anything going for it as far as I was concerned,” Biehn tells The Hollywood Reporter. Which, let’s be honest, it probably would.
He knew he could give a good performance, even if the movie failed. He saw potential for The Terminator‘s love story. He liked the character of Kyle Reese, a freedom fighter from the future. Should he really read for The Terminator?Īt his agent’s suggestion, Biehn read the script. So, Biehn was unimpressed when his agent, Ed Limato, told him the only person attached to this cyborg script was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian body builder not known for his acting chops or even for his command of the English language.
Ever since seeing Taxi Driver, Biehn wanted to work with the best - De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson, Redford. He was intense, the type of person who took his work seriously, maybe too seriously - and he wanted to get even better. But Jim Cameron had written a new script, about a cyborg from the future trying to kill a young woman, and apparently it was pretty good.Īctor Michael Biehn, the guy who’d never heard of Jim Cameron, was a good-looking kid from Nebraska. Almost no one had heard of Jim Cameron, the young director whose most notable credit was being fired from 1981’s Piranha II: The Spawning a few years earlier. “Who the fuck is Jim Cameron? I’ve never heard of him.”