The Untold Truth Of Nicolas Cage

There are certain actors where you can easily track their path from promising newcomer to superstardom. Actors like Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Johnny Depp were at the forefront of a host of hotshot newcomers making waves in the '80s and '90s based on their acting choices and leading man roles. But a more unusual candidate for the position of Hollywood's next leading superstar was actor Nicolas Cage. 

Cage broke on to the scene with notable roles in such '80s movies as "Valley Girl," "Raising Arizona," and "Moonstruck." He followed up those character-driven roles with crowd-pleasing blockbusters in the '90s, including "The Rock," "Con Air," and "Face/Off." And yet, despite his well-established Hollywood leading man status, there always seemed to be something remarkably offbeat about Cage's acting and film choices. After falling off the A-list for a bit in the last decade, the actor has seen a career resurgence in the past few years with well-received indie films on a variety of unusual subjects. And new audiences have freshly discovered Cage's impressive backlog of more than 100 movies from the past 40 years, leaving them curious about this charismatic star. 

Well, if you want to know more about Nicolas Cage, here's the untold truth about one of Hollywood's most talented actors.

Hollywood is full of stories of unknown actors getting their big break in the most unusual places. But the film industry being the competitive place that it is, rarely do such stories feature already-established actors giving the newcomers a leg up. Nicolas Cage was one such actor who was already a star when he discovered a promising new talent in the shape of young Johnny Depp.

The story goes that when Depp first entered the entertainment industry, his dream was to become a famous musician rather than an actor. At the time, Depp lived in the same building as Nicolas Cage, and the two struck up a friendship. "[Depp] was at the point in his career where he was selling pens or something to get by," Cage told The New York Times Magazine in 2019, adding, "We were good friends, and we would play 'Monopoly,' and he was winning a game, and I was watching him, and I said, 'Why don't you just try acting?'"

The suggestion did not go down well with Depp at first, who didn't see himself as a thespian. That was when Cage went a step further by hooking Depp up with his own film agent. One of the first jobs that the agent sent Depp was an audition for a role in a little horror flick called ... "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Depp aced the audition, got the role, and thus began his own journey to Hollywood superstardom.

While Nicolas Cage is an avid superhero fan, he collects far more than just comic books. As he amassed greater fortunes thanks to a string of leading roles in blockbuster movies, the actor went on a bit of a splurging spree, buying up houses in foreign locales, exotic wildlife, and rare artifacts.

The question of ownership of one such rare artifact saw Cage going head-to-head against none other than Leonardo DiCaprio. The item in question was the skull of a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar, a cousin of the T-Rex. According to The Telegraph, Cage won the skull only after a fierce bidding war against DiCaprio, in the end shelling out $276,000 to add the skull to his private collection. 

But the story doesn't end there. Some six years later, it appeared that the skull had been supplied to the auction house through illegal means. After discovering this fact, Cage elected to return the skull to the proper authorities rather than try to assert his own claim over the item since he paid for it (and never got his money back). Perhaps those "National Treasure" films Cage did were an attempt to make up for the real-life disappointments the actor has experienced when it comes to procuring precious artifacts.    

If you first became aware of Nicolas Cage through internet memes, you would know that the actor is famous for his extremely forceful acting, even in scenes that don't seem to merit such force. While this has occasionally led to accusations of overacting, the truth is Cage sincerely believes in his maximalist style of performance rather than using it as a showboating exercise.

This same style has pushed Cage in extreme directions in other bizarre ways as well. For the 1984 drama film "Birdy," Cage elected to have some of his teeth removed in order to better portray the role of a war veteran suffering from severe facial injuries. (In fairness, Cage still had some baby teeth, so these would grow back.) Cage also wore the bandages that his character wore in the movie at all times during filming, resulting in severe acne and ingrowing hair on his damaged skin.      

Then there was 1989's "Vampire's Kiss," in which Cage played the role of an ambitious literary agent who falls in love with a vampire. In one scene, Cage's character eats a live cockroach. If you're learned anything about the actor by now, it won't be surprising to know that was a real cockroach which Cage ate on his own insistence in order to make the scene feel real for the audience. And now we can't help but wonder if Cage ever considered setting his face on fire while playing Ghost Rider.

Much has been written about the unusual and often downright bizarre acting choices Nicolas Cage makes in all his roles. The man can go from whispering to shouting in an instant for seemingly no reason, and his frequent bouts of hysterical laughter in the middle of tense scenes have led to many memes being created.  

Yet despite the seemingly random nature of such acting choices, there appears to be a method to the madness of Nicolas Cage that devoted fans have spent years poring over. This method has actually been confirmed by Cage himself to be a part of a style of acting that he created for himself. The actor has referred to this style in the past as "nouveau shamanic" and also "Western kabuki."

"Nouveau shamanic is nothing other than trying to augment your imagination to get to the performance without feeling like you're faking it," Cage explained in an interview with The New York Times magazine. He described the style of acting as being conducive to opening up your imagination so as to make you genuinely believe in the scene you are about do. According to Cage, an important part of the process is finding physical items called "power objects" that can trick your brain into imagining the scene is part of reality.   

The more variety of roles an actor plays, the more difficult is it for them to find something to relate to for each character. While Nicolas Cage has played scores of characters in his long career, one that appears to be close to his heart is treasure hunter and cryptographer Benjamin Franklin Gates from the "National Treasure" series.

Why is this character more relatable for Cage? Because the actor is an amateur treasure hunter in real life. His ultimate goal is to find the Holy Grail of all treasures, the literal Holy Grail itself.    

"You read a book [about the Holy Grail], and in it, there's a reference to another book, and then you buy that book," Cage explained in his interview with The New York Times, "and then you attach the references. For me it was all about where was the grail? Was it here? Was it there? Is it at Glastonbury? Does it exist?" The actor's hunt led him all over the world following clues from scripture and historical tomes. Ultimately, Cage concluded that the Holy Grail is a metaphor for the Earth itself. Which quite frankly sounds like one of those "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way" trope endings that coming-of-age movies use. 

It's no secret that Nicolas Cage is a huge comics fan. Interestingly, while audiences know him best as a Marvel actor thanks to "Ghost Rider," Cage has displayed a greater love for DC Comics over a longer period. Apart from buying the first "Superman" comic for a huge sum, Cage has also named his son "Kal-El" in honor of the Last Son of Krypton.

In fact, Cage was all set to put his own spin on Superman with none other than filmmaker Tim Burton, who'd already delivered a giant win for DC with the live-action "Batman" movies starring Michael Keaton. Cage's superhero caper was going to be called "Superman Lives," and although the project was ultimately shelved, a documentary was made about the unmade movie, and test footage of Cage's costume can be seen online.

It was several decades later in 2018 that Cage finally got the chance to play Superman when he voiced the character in "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies." That same year, Cage also voiced a variant of Spider-Man called Spider-Man Noir in the critically acclaimed "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." In other words, the man loves superheroes.