The movie that blessed Nicolas Cage with the gift of astral projection: “I actually left my body”
If 99% of actors claimed they’d become so immersed in their own performance that they ended up transcending the physical plane and existing outside of their own body, then they’d be accused of talking utter mince. However, when Nicolas Cage says it, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to believe.
After all, nobody has approached the art of acting from the same perspective as the meme-worthy maverick, and he’s so completely dedicated to his craft that he’s gone to some seriously strange lengths. He’s eaten cockroaches, hired coaches to help him be a convincing alcoholic, and had hot yoghurt slathered on his toes for a sex scene, so astral projection isn’t really much of a stretch.
The Academy Award winner has drawn inspiration from a myriad of eclectic influences, ranging from claymation characters and his own father to kabuki theatre and German expressionism. With that in mind, the thought of Cage being so convinced he’d stepped into another realm can’t be called out of the ordinary.
What makes it even more on-brand is that the film in question required him to play a character who then ended up playing another character that another actor had initially played. John Woo’s Face/Off already necessitated Cage to not only play Castor Troy but then play John Travolta’s Sean Archer playing Cage’s Castor Troy, which effectively meant Cage was watching himself playing Travolta as Cage from an entirely different dimension.
When it’s said like that, it’s enough to scramble the brain, but when it happens to an actor like Cage, there’s no other choice than to take him at his word. “There was a moment in there where I think I actually left my body,” he told Variety with the utmost solemnity. “Where I just got scared.”
Astral projection was dicey enough, but viewing himself from the outside also brought on an existential crisis mid-scene. “Am I acting, or is this real?” Cage queried about his out-of-body experience. “And I can see it when I look at the movie, that one moment, it’s in my eyes.”
Those who don’t pay much heed to spiritualism may be inclined to think the star is talking bollocks when there’s no such thing as astral projection, but for the people who dwell on the other side of the fence, a fun game to play would be to watch Face/Off in all of its gun-toting glory to try and pick out the exact scene Cage is talking about where he became a man trapped between two worlds in the midst of reciting dialogue in front of a cast and crew.
Whereas Travolta had a blast turning up and mimicking Cage in the post-face-swapping section of Face/Off, it’s clear that Cage endured an entirely different experience that spontaneously separated his human form from his consciousness. Or at least that’s the way he tells it.
