James Cameron Calls Out Amy Poehler’s 2013 Joke About His Marriage to Kathryn Bigelow

Nearly 16 years later, James Cameron is still upset about Amy Poehler’s joke about his marriage to Kathryn Bigelow.

Recalling Poehler’s joke from the 2013 Golden Globes where he served as the punchline, the legendary director called it an “ignorant dig.”

In Poehler and her co-host Tina Fey’s opening monologue, the comedic pair joked about the controversial depiction of torture in Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty.

here is the joke amy poehler made about james cameron at the 2013 golden globes, it’s still funny 😭 https://t.co/pzajFJ7p66 pic.twitter.com/AnxeKFbJsz

— Susie (@i_am_susie) December 23, 2025

“I haven’t really been following the controversy over Zero Dark Thirty, but when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron,” Poehler joked. Safe to say the joke landed in the room filled with Hollywood’s elite.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Cameron said, “Amy Poehler’s remark was an ignorant dig, at an event which is supposed to be a celebration of cinema and filmmakers, not a roast. I’m pretty thick-skinned, and happy to be the butt of a good-natured joke, but that went too far. The fact that people found it funny shows exactly what they think of me, even though they have no idea who I am or how I work.”

During the 2010s, the Golden Globes earned a reputation for roast-style humor about the nominees, perhaps sparked by a string of hosting stints by comedian Ricky Gervais. Poehler and Fey hosted three consecutive times from 2013 to 2015, returning in 2021.

Cameron and Bigelow were married between 1989 and 1991. Cameron executive produced Bigelow’s 1991 movie Point Break and co-wrote her 1995 film Strange Days.

In the New York Times interview, Cameron said that Hollywood has tried to pit the two filmmakers against each other, specifically during the 2009-2010 awards season, when Avatar and The Hurt Locker faced off. Bigelow won the Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, which also won Best Picture.

“I was the first one on my feet applauding,” Cameron said. “Kathryn and I thought the whole meta-narrative around us was pretty funny. I was a little concerned that it would just take away from her credibility as a filmmaker. It started to turn into a conversation that wasn’t about her film, and that bothered both of us.”

Funnily enough, Cameron wasn’t the only person to be offended during the 2013 Golden Globes. That was the same ceremony where Fey and Poehler cracked a joke about Taylor Swift’s dating life, with Fey telling the singer to “stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son,” adding that “she needs some me-time to learn about herself,” a joke Swift later slammed in a Vanity Fair cover story.

“You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people,” Swift told the magazine. “Because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’”

Fey responded at the time by telling Entertainment Tonight, “If anyone was going to get mad at us, I thought it would be James Cameron. I did not see that one coming. It was a joke, and it was a lighthearted joke. And it’s a shame that she didn’t take it in the crazy-aunt spirit in which it was intended.”