The naked, ice lolly-eating intruder who broke into Nicolas Cage’s home in 2007: “It sounds funny, but it was horrifying”
Back in 2007, ‘Nouveau Shamanic’ mega-actor Nicolas Cage genuinely came face to face with a naked home invader.
It was in the early hours of Monday, October 1st, when Robert Dennis Furo Jr made his way into Cage’s Orange County residence. Reportedly, there was little sign of a break-in or forced entry, allowing the San Pedro tailor to wander into the home with ease at around two in the morning. Sleeping beside his wife with his two-year-old child in another room, Cage woke up to Furo standing right at the foot of his bed.
“I know it sounds funny… but it was horrifying,” Cage later confessed to reporters.
The sight was a disturbing one. While displaying no aggression or erratic behaviour, the naked Furo had rifled through the actor’s wardrobe and decided to don one of Cage’s leather jackets and raided the house freezer for a Fudgesicle ice lolly. A burst of adrenaline must have raced through Cage, figuring out whether to attack Furo or slyly call the cops without making a fanfare. Instead, while keeping a cool head, he engaged with some controlled but firm ‘verbal judo’ to persuade the intruder to vacate his property, pronto.
“Take off my jacket and get out of my house,” Cage allegedly bellowed to Furo after having jumped from his bed and cornered the invader in a nearby bathroom. Sure enough, the home invader duly obliged without issue, Cage escorting Furo outside while calling the security of his gated Newport Beach community, then later apprehended by the local Newport Beach Police Department.
Cage decided not to press charges due to Furo’s mental health issues, but the state of California still potentially had a six-year state prison sentence on the books. The defendant’s lawyer made the argument that his client had been battered by a sleeping pill and prescription painkiller stupor and wandered into Cage’s home in a fog of confusion.
Furo pleaded guilty to felony stalking and was forced to undergo six months of court-ordered drug rehabilitation alongside probation as well as remain at least 100 yards away from the Cage family and avoid any form of contact; since then, the tailor has remained out of the public eye.
Despite being able to wryly laugh about it years later, Cage was spooked, and he and his family upped sticks after the experience and moved to Nassau in the Bahamas. It took a few years for Cage to ever talk about it explicitly, when he discussed the event at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the encounter would fuel 2011’s Trespass.
Cage didn’t need much to tap into the role of a husband living in a mansion with his daughter and wife, the latter played by Nicole Kidman, facing off against thieves who have conned their way into his private home, despite his Razzie nomination. No harm was ever done, and the intruder tale forms a curious footnote in Cage’s lore, but as the dark side of Hollywood has flashed before, such a terrifying ordeal can have much more frightening consequences.
