'Titanic' director James Cameron reacts to 1998 Oscar speech

Filmmaker James Cameron opened up on his Oscar acceptance speech for Titanic in 1998.

During an interview with CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, the Avatar director reacted to his Titanic where Cameron shouted, “I’m the king of the world!”

Now, the Oscar winner admitted that the moment was “cringe-worthy,” adding, “I was trying to express the joy and excitement that I was feeling in terms of that movie, and the most joyful moment for the character.”

The 68-year-old explained, “What I learned is, you don’t quote your own movie 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.

We’ll never know how much we won by, but it might not have been a landslide at all. I took flack for all 25 years after that, but you know, you live, and you learn. I think what was interpreted as arrogance or a big *******, I-told-you-so’ wasn’t what was in my head at all.”

Cameron concluded with a joke alluding to Sally Field’s infamous, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!” acceptance speech in 1985 (frequently misquoted as “You like me, you really like me!”) when she won for Places in the Heart.

“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,” Cameron said.