His book Long Way Home, out tomorrow, is a frank description of growing up with the Hollywood legacy of Michael, 75, and his grandfather Kirk, 102. Cameron, now also an actor, recalls at the age of nine how his father's career was transformed by Fatal Attraction and Wall Street in 1987, and was followed by successes including Basic Instinct.
But as Michael's fame grew, his marriage to Diandra Douglas, Cameron's mother, began to disintegrate. Cameron drifted into delinquency and drugs. He writes that for years he was a cocaine and heroin addict who dealt crystal meth to make ends meet. After being sentenced to five years in jail in 2010, his time was extended by another four and a half years for drug possession inside jail. He was released in 2016.
At one point during his son's wild days, Michael said: "I think you're going to overdose, or someone's going to kill you, or you're going to kill someone. I'm trying to prepare myself emotionally."
In the book, Cameron describes his relationship with his father as a "series of jump cuts, vivid bursts when we were together, punctuating longer stretches when we were apart".
Michael divorced Diandra in 1995 and in 2000 he married Catherine Zeta-Jones. In 2013, Michael said he regretted making the same mistakes with Cameron that his father made.
He said: "My career was... my focus... I was gone more than I should have been."