The Nicolas Cage performance inspired by sci-fi horror and his own father
Nicolas Cage is not like most other actors. In an industry that predominantly prioritises naturalism over all else, Cage is often a renegade. He will play a character in a realistic manner if that’s what the material calls for, but if he’s required to go a bit bigger, he’s been known to draw from a wide array of influences and different acting techniques to create something entirely his own. Fascinatingly, in one of his recent performances, Cage revealed that he melded two things he loves – science-fiction horror movies and his late father, August Coppola – to create a memorable character.
When Cage signed up to star in Benjamin Brewer’s post-apocalyptic horror movie Arcadian, he knew the script appealed to him on several levels. The story follows a father named Paul, who is raising his two sons on a remote farm in a dangerous near future after an environmental disaster has left the Earth open to invasion by a terrifying alien species. The alien beasts only come out in the dark, which makes every day a nail-biting exercise in caution and every night a desperate battle for survival.
After the film’s world premiere at the South by Southwest Festival in March 2024, Cage was asked why he was interested in telling the story of Paul and his sons. He answered, “It’s very simple, really,” before explaining that the film expertly combines two of his favourite genres: “Independently spirited family drama” and “science fiction horror”. The idea of mixing the tone of films like East of Eden and Ordinary People and the talents of people like Elia Kazan and Robert Redford with uniquely designed monsters profoundly spoke to Cage, who grew up a dedicated fan of both kinds of film.
In addition, though, the story of a father doing everything in his power to protect his sons spoke to Cage on a personal level. You see, Cage’s mother, Joy Vogelsang, suffered from mental illness throughout her life and was institutionalised at various points in Cage’s childhood. This left the bulk of parental responsibility to Cage’s father, August, a literature professor and brother of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola.
Cage revealed, “The dynamic of the family, which is a father and two boys… is largely what my family dynamic was because sadly my mother couldn’t be around as much as we would have liked her to have been around. So, my father did all the heavy lifting.” This personal parallel helped the star become passionate about telling a sci-fi horror tale with his specific family unit represented on-screen.
In truth, though, his performance in Arcadian wasn’t the first time Cage had drawn from aspects of his father’s life and personality for one of his performances. In both Vampire’s Kiss and Renfield, in which Cage played a literary agent who thinks he’s becoming a vampire and the Lord of Darkness himself, the actor channelled his father’s voice.
Cage told the Post Cred Pod that his father, who was from Long Beach, California, spoke in a vaguely English-sounding mid-Atlantic accent. He would tell his son this was how a literature professor should sound, so he adopted the slightly odd accent. Cage mused, “So, I just thought, ‘Dad looks like Christopher Lee, dad kind of sounds like he’s in a Hammer Horror film, and I did dad in Vampire’s Kiss, so I’m going to bring him back from the afterlife as Dracula.”
To someone like Cage, channelling a family member as a villainous character isn’t anything to hide – it’s something to be celebrated. After all, he also revealed that he used his mum as inspiration for his terrifying performance in Longlegs. To him, it’s all fair game. However, Cage did chuckle to AP News, “Gosh, I channelled my dad for Dracula, and I channelled my mom for Longlegs. What does that say about my childhood?”
