Julia Cameron

Biography

Julia Cameron was born in Libertyville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and raised Catholic. She was the second oldest of seven children. She started college at Georgetown University before transferring to Fordham University. She wrote for The Washington Post and then Rolling Stone.

She met Martin Scorsese while on assignment for Oui Magazine. They married in 1976 and divorced a year later in 1977. They have one daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, born in 1976. The marriage ended after Scorsese began seeing Liza Minnelli while the three of them were working on New York, New York. Cameron and Scorsese collaborated on three films. Her memoir Floor Sample details her descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, which induced blackouts, paranoia and psychosis. In 1978, reaching a point in her life when writing and drinking could no longer coexist, Cameron stopped abusing drugs and alcohol, and began teaching creative unblocking, eventually publishing the book based on her work: The Artist's Way. At first she sold Xeroxed copies of the book in a local bookstore before it was published by TarcherPerigee in 1992. She contends that creativity is an authentic spiritual path.