Pedro Pascal names his favourite Nicolas Cage movies
Actor Pedro Pascal has been making all the headlines recently following his excellent performance in the first season of the video game adaptation The Last of Us. Pascal also played a significant role in last year’s celebrated semi-autobiographical film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent alongside Nicolas Cage.
Pascal, recently appearing on an episode of Hot Ones, was asked what his favourite Cage films. He said, “You don’t have to throw any at me. The earlier ones were for me because of how impressionable they were. Raising Arizona, Peggy Sue Got Married, Face-Off. I got a soft spot for Moonstruck, man.” Raising Arizona is certainly one of Cage’s best performances. The film is the Coen brothers crime comedy in which Cage plays the ex-convict H.I. McDunnough.
In his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s fantasy comedy Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage played the bonkers husband of the titular character, while in Face-Off, Cage once again put his crazy capabilities to the test as homicidal sociopath Castor Troy. However, it looks like Cage in Moonstruck is Pascal’s favourite.
Discussing Cage’s performance in the 1987 film, Pascal said: “It isn’t even about having a big swing in terms of performances; it is actually highly, highly intelligent choice-making in his acting. Where [he’s] gonna do like a Fritz Lang hand thing at the moment where [he] screams about [his] brother Danny Aiello accidentally chopping his hand off.”
Pascal continued: “He looked away and chopped his hand off, and it’s like, ‘I lost my hand!’ And to this day, it’s this perfect effect where it’s ground in the scene, has all of this theatrical context to it and concept, but he’s still believable.”
Cage had performed alongside Pascal in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where he played a fictional version of himself. Pascal fittingly played a crime boss who has a profound love for all of Cage’s films. It was a brilliant relationship between the two actors and served as a tribute from Pascal to his idol.
Discussing his appreciation for Cage in light of performing alongside him in last year’s film, Pascal said, “It was really amazing to do homework for that movie and re-watch all these movies that I’d already seen so many times. Adaptation is maybe one of the best screen performances in the history of American cinema, but the four that I mentioned have a personal place in my development as an aspiring.”
He added, “And to this day, in my DNA a little bit, where I realise I’m doing something and I’m saying something in a way that I have to stop and take a second and realise, ‘Oh, I got that from Vampire’s Kiss‘, or something.” High praise, indeed.
