Nicolas Cage

Apart from being one of the most gifted actors of his generation, Nicolas Cage is also one of the most versatile.

It’s 20-odd years since he made Hollywood sit up and take notice with daringly original performances in such films as Raising Arizona, Moonstruck and Vampire’s Kiss (in which he reputedly ate a live cockroach on screen).

Since then Cage has mixed edgier independent fare such as Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas, winning a Best Actor Oscar for the last film, with mainstream films such as The Rock, Con Air, Gone In Sixty Seconds and National Treasure, all four for Hollywood’s most consistently successful producer, Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer and Cage have collaborated for a fifth time on National Treasure: Book of Secrets, a sequel to the original film in which the actor revisits the character of Ben Gates. Part time bookish archaeologist and history buff and part time treasure hunter, Gates finds himself dashing around the world in pursuit of fabled, long-lost treasure and a dark secret about one of his ancestors.
Cage is renowned for not doing sequels, so what made Book of Secrets so special?

‘I didn’t have any expectations for the first film and I was somewhat surprised, happily surprised, that it caught on the way it did so I was very pleased to have a chance to play such a positive character again,’ explained Cage.

‘When I read the first script I thought it was a fresh concept – here’s this man who’s really interested in history and is a bit of a square, but also is an archaeological detective of sorts, a treasure hunter and even a glorified criminal, but who isn’t violent in any way. There are worse things to do than stimulate young people to look in their history books and I also thought that he was a character I could grow with.’

In the first film Ben Gates had to steal The Declaration of Independence, one of America’s great historical treasures, but the stakes are even higher here.

‘Not only do we kidnap the President of the United States, but we’ve upped the ante with the historical concept of this one because the story revolves around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and some missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth.

‘Those missing pages are a historical fact and there is still a lot of speculation about that fateful night that Lincoln was shot at the theatre and who was involved and what they might have been looking for. So it makes for a wonderfully exciting and really interesting tale. There’s a nice, complicated weave to the story.’

But, according to Cage, that certainly doesn’t mean they skimp on the action.
‘There’s a wow factor to the spectacle this time around, the set pieces are gorgeous. The Black Hills in South Dakota are a really amazing visual experience, and we shot there, on Mount Rushmore.’

This film stars some massive stars such as Helen Mirren, Jon Voight, Ed Harris and Harvey Keitel, but Nicolas wasn’t worried they would steal all his scenes.
‘The more you encourage someone to be great in a movie the better that movie will be,’ he laughed.

‘You know, it’s one of the more obnoxious things about film actors when they get competitive and start to worry about being upstaged and who gets the last word.’
For Nicolas Cage, variety is key, which can easily be seen by the differing genres within his back catalogue; and well, if that hinders his career so be it.

‘It’s clear to me that I’ve successfully pissed everybody off! I’ve pissed off the fans of Leaving Las Vegas and I’ve pissed off the fans of National Treasure, because I keep doing a little bit of everything and inevitably everybody gets upset at some point.

But I’m not interested in a career based on one kind of movie,’ he stated.
‘I’m the kind of person who needs to keep a sense of adventure and exploration going and it doesn’t mean it’s always going to work, but it is going to keep me interested, and that’s my main goal.

‘I’m not sure people always get it, but I’m genuinely interested in punk rock, rebellious, avant-garde films and I’m genuinely interested in big adventure movies. That’s how I grew up. I like both.’

‘So, you know, I’m planning to keep pissing people off,’ he summed up with a wry smile.

Return to celebrity interviews