The Nicolas Cage role almost played by Al Pacino
At first glance, it might seem hard to find enough similarities between Nicolas Cage and Al Pacino to consider them for the same role. But look across the performances of the two actors, and you’ll find two men who are known for a diverse range of intense, big swings in acting style and occupy iconic spots in popular culture.
This unorthodox similarity would be important for director Brian De Palma when casting his 1998 mystery-thriller Snake Eyes. The film sees the murder of the US Defence Secretary take place in the middle of a crowded boxing match on the night of a tropical storm. It’s a movie brimming with late-1990s bravado and glamour and shows Cage at his most extreme levels of intensity.
But the Hawaiian shirt-clad Detective Rick Santoro wasn’t always to be played by the actor famed for his larger-than-life on-screen performances. De Palma originally offered the role to the star of The Godfather and the previous De Palma classic, Scarface – Al Pacino.
For a film that relied on the dynamic of the two protagonists (Rick Santoro and Kevin Dunne, played by Gary Sinise), the casting of the two actors to play the roles needed to be established early on. “We did work on one version of the script with Al in mind, but we were not sure about the other guy,” said De Palma. At the time of initial writing, the idea was to have the two parts played not by contemporaries of each other but more of an ‘older man-younger-man rapport’.
Pacino turned down the role, having just come off the back of a similar dynamic in the crime drama Donnie Brasco, where he played the seasoned hitman opposite a young undercover FBI agent portrayed by Johnny Depp. Pacino was uncertain about immediately taking on another project that had him painted in a similar light, so the script shifted to be about two men of the same age.
“It became Nicholas Cage and Gary Sinise,” said the Mission Impossible director, explaining that once Sinise became available, an actor who was able to “play a dark character”, the script started to take a different shape and was about two men “with the same background, sort of childhood buddies.”
The film would help solidify Cage as a compelling leading man. His roles throughout the late 1990s, such as Con Air and Face/Off, left an indelible mark on the landscape of cinema during that decade, much in the same way Pacino’s work in the 1970s did.
Both actors have fans in their legions. They continue to make bold and exciting choices that keep them in contention as two of the more interesting actors in the industry.
