The first actors who fascinated Nicolas Cage: “That’s certainly what I was aspiring to”
With over 120 films, ten of which were released in the last two years, and a career that began in 1980s comedies with Fast Times at Ridgemont High before weaving its way through drama, thrillers, an Academy Award, and more recently horror with the acclaimed release of Longlegs, Nicolas Cage is one of the more fascinating actors working today.
He’s an actor known for a big swing in his craft and seemingly refuses to be held down by genre. But who fascinates the fascinating? Which stars sparked the fire in a young Nic Cage and brought us a plethora of performances that are so distinct?
Surprisingly, his trifecta of early inspirations came in the form of the more stoic actors of the 1960s and ‘70s. Cage mentions being ‘fascinated by the magic of filmmaking’ and recalls watching classic westerns at a young age featuring the likes of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West, which the actor mentions could be his “favourite movie”, and a performance that was drawn on heavily for Cage’s own portrayal of a gunslinger in 2023s The Old Way.
“He was able to convey so much and do so little,” Cage says of Bronson. “I don’t know if I got close to that, but that’s certainly what I was aspiring to.”
“I’m talking six, seven, eight” – these early impressions on Cage would find him propelled on a journey to bring his vivid childhood imagination into reality. While his inspirations became synonymous with steely-eyed stares, Cage has spent his career defying a type, occupying a chameleon-like space in cinema that few are able to. Early on, Cage showed his adaptability, moving from raucous teen comedy to mood-driven drama within the first year of his career, appearing in both Valley Girl and Rumble Fish in 1983.
Action-thriller films were a defining genre of the late 1990s, and despite the iconic releases of Con Air and Face/Off within a year of each other, Nicolas Cage’s opportunity in 1996 to star in The Rock was particularly significant. The film not only partnered Cage with director Jerry Bruckheimer—who would go on to direct him in five more projects—but also gave him the chance to share the screen with one of his key inspirations, Sean Connery. Cage recalls that Connery, the former 007, gave him a piece of advice that continues to guide his work: “You have to know how to enter the room. When you’ve entered the room, they notice.”
Cage would draw on Eastwood’s influence while on the set of Con Air, remarking that he wanted to echo the one-liners that made films like Sudden Impact so iconic. “You see these adventure films with these big stars, like Clint Eastwood, ‘Make my day’, and I thought, ‘How can I take that tradition, make the ‘Make my day’ so ridiculous”. The result was the now iconic “put the bunny back in the box”, a line Cage wrote on set.
Such a varied filmography comes as no surprise. “I loved movies,” he commented. “I loved watching the TV and getting lost in films.” Anything other than an ability to shift from leading man in a crime thriller to voice acting in an animated film about cavemen seemed like an impossibility for Cage, who specified his desire to be a film actor as something ‘pure and organic’.
Despite over 40 years of work already under his belt, Nicolas Cage doesn’t seem to know the meaning of slowing down, and if recent years are anything to go by, we’re still yet to see the true limits of what the actor is capable of. If Cage’s only goal in his career was to be as notable or fascinating as the men who first rapt his imagination, then I think it’s hard to say he’s not been successful, but it seems more likely that Cage’s goal is simply to continue doing what he so clearly loves, for as long as we continue to watch him.
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