When Nicolas Cage called out Jon Voight in front of the entire crew: “My ego is not involved”
You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Nicolas Cage. As well as being notably bonkers, he’s also an avid practitioner of the Brazilian jiu-jitsu martial arts. Some sources claim he’s a black belt in the discipline. He even made a movie about it called Jiu Jitsu in 2020, although the less said about that demonic hellspawn, the better.
Though he’s never beaten up one of his co-stars for real (that we know of), Cage has turned his ire towards others on more than one occasion. When he was just a child, he dressed up as his older brother to challenge a bully who kept stealing his Twinkies on the school bus — come up with a more Nic Cage sentence than that, go on, just try. As an adult, he would turn his wicked wit towards his colleagues, including a legend of the acting game.
In 2004, Cage starred in National Treasure, the first film depicting the exploits of history-loving artefact hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates. For this inaugural adventure, Cage was joined by Sean Bean, Diane Kruger, Harvey Keitel, and Jon Voight, the latter of whom was playing his character’s father. In an interview with Filmmaker, Voight revealed that his co-star once made a very public joke at his expense.
“We don’t say too much to each other, because we’re very delicate about suggesting or asking things of each other, sometimes a little too delicate,” the Midnight Cowboy star explained. “We did a couple of takes, and it looked like we were going to take that, but there was a little moment that I thought he could correct. So I suggested it to Nic, and he immediately thought it was the right thing to do. Then he said to the crew, ‘Wait a minute, Jon Voight has a suggestion to make, which is of course a very unusual occurrence!’ and everybody laughed.”
Cage’s jab at Voight was influenced by his reputation for always having ideas about how to elevate his own scenes. The interview here even mentions it, bringing up rumours that he was constantly on Brian De Palma’s back during the making of Mission: Impossible. “The little laugh was interesting to me, because obviously they get the idea that I am making suggestions, and apparently everybody knows that it’s my M.O., that I’ll participate,” he deduced. “My ego is not involved, my thought is, ‘Is there something that can be improved in this sequence?’”
There clearly wasn’t too much bad blood between the two, as both reprised their role for the sequel, Book of Secrets. Voight also has a history with Cage’s family, having appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s (Nic’s uncle) 1997 film The Rainmaker. He recently reunited with Coppola for the cinematic event that was Megalopolis; the controversial actor was cast as part of the director’s misguided ‘war on woke’. The movie might have been terrible, but at least it gave the world Voight asking us to look at the ‘boner I got’.
It takes a lot of chutzpah to challenge someone as revered and respected as Voight so publicly, but Cage has never been one to back down from a challenge. Ultimately, this was just a bit of light-hearted ribbing, but perhaps it betrayed his true feelings towards the acting legend? We’ll never know for sure.
