Nicolas Cage said he prefers to be called a thespian, not an actor.
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Nicolas Cage is no longer an actor.
You heard that right: the actor who will soon play himself in a movie about himself is now a self-proclaimed “thespian.”
“For me it always implies, ‘Oh, he’s a great actor, therefore he’s a great liar,’” Cage said in an interview with Variety. “So with the risk of sounding like a pretentious a – – hole, I like the word ‘thespian’ because thespian means you’re going into your heart, or you’re going into your imagination, or your memories or your dreams, and you’re bringing something back to communicate with the audience.”
The “Face/Off” actor, 57, told Variety that he always wanted to “break the rules” of acting, dubbing himself a “rebel.”
“You know, in painting, for example, you can get abstract, you can get photorealistic, you can get impressionistic, why not try that with film performance?” Cage said.
When reflecting on his acting, Cage also reminisced on past roles, like in “Face/Off,” where his acting started to feel like reality.
“There was a moment in there where I think I actually left my body, where I just got scared,” he said. “Am I acting or is this real? And I can see it when I look at the movie, that one moment, it’s in my eyes.”
But for his role in 2021’s “Pig,” he wanted to revert back to subtlety.
“I knew after a couple of flops that I had been marginalized in the studio system; and I wasn’t going to get invited by them,” he said. “I always knew that it would take a young filmmaker who would come back or remember some movies I had made and know that I might be right for his script and rediscover me.”
In the film, Cage plays Rob, a former chef who hunts truffles with his beloved pig that eventually gets kidnapped, acting as the catalyst for his journey. The film is by first-time director Michael Sarnoski, who Cage refers to as an “archangel” for having the “open mind” to cast him.
But this wasn’t the only film Cage starred in this year. You can find him on-screen in “Prisoners of the Ghostland,” which our reviewer called his “wildest movie” yet, even after decades of acting.
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