Movies Where Nic Cage Was Already Playing Himself

His role as a fictional version of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent isn’t the first time that Nicolas Cage has played himself on screen. One of Hollywood’s most enduring and generally divisive figures, Nicolas Cage has seen his fair share of both critical acclaim and critical panning. Despite roles in broadly forgotten and objectively bad movies such as Left Behind and Next, Cage has also earned critical acclaim for his films, including winning an Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Leaving Las Vegas.

In addition to his eclectic choice of roles and the broad disparity between the quality of his movies, Nicolas Cage is also well known for his eccentricity. As well as his obsession with matters concerning the occult, Cage’s impulsive purchases of castles, islands, and even the skull of a dinosaur landed him in legal trouble regarding his failure to pay taxes. Nic Cage’s dinosaur-related bankruptcy is just one of many aspects of the actor’s career that have made him a larger-than-life figure, and his reputation for his bizarre off-screen behavior is almost as legendary as his on-screen antics.

Throughout his long, successful career so far, Cage has proven himself to be an incredibly versatile performer with a genuine dedication to his craft. Though Cage has many detractors, he devotes a certain level of intensity to every role he takes, and in many of them, he uses a little more of his own personality than might be considered usual. The highly-anticipated 2022 comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent might be Cage’s most meta role yet, but he’s actually spent a considerable portion of his career injecting his own personality into his roles.

Wild At Heart

1990’s Wild at Heart was somewhat divisive among critics upon its release but has since been afforded a more favorable critical re-evaluation. Cage stars as Sailor Ripley, a character the actor himself describes as a “romantic Southern outlaw“. Though Cage drew clear inspiration from Elvis Presley for the role, including adopting a vaguely reminiscent speech pattern and accent, the characterization of Sailor as a charismatic bad boy outsider fits perfectly with Cage’s own public image. Though he may not outwardly share similarities with Cage, Ripley exudes the same smoldering intensity and unburdened, carefree nature, drawing major parallels with Cage’s own personality.

Leaving Las Vegas

Widely considered Nicolas Cage’s best role, Leaving Las Vegas was the film that earned the actor his Oscar. Despite playing the role of a suicidal alcoholic screenwriter, Cage managed to inject more authenticity into the role than was strictly necessary. By the actor’s own admission, he shot a number of scenes “hammered” as he wanted to be as “credible” as possible while playing alcoholic Ben Sanderson. Though it could be argued that it was Cage himself who became Ben Sanderson for Leaving Las Vegas, the blurred line between reality and fiction makes it another role in which Cage put himself into the movie.

Drive Angry

The role of Drive Angry‘s John Milton is only linked to Cage in a more abstract sense. John Milton escapes from Hell in Drive Angry with the God-Killer, Satan’s own personal favorite weapon, in order to kill the cult leader responsible for his daughter’s murder. It’s far from one of Cage’s better films, but it’s a passable action-horror with a supernatural premise. It’s in the strange mash-up of the occult and over-the-top action that Drive Angry‘s John Milton begins to overlap with Nicolas Cage. As Cage’s own personal interest in the occult is well-documented, Drive Angry plays out like the actor’s own private daydream, complete with the apparent prospect of eternal torment combined with revenge-fueled murder.

Mandy

In recent years, Nicolas Cage has seen something of a resurgence by taking on unexpected roles in unexpected films. Nicolas Cage’s horror movies are far better than many initially suspected, and Mandy is perhaps the best of the bunch. Cage admitted that the reason he associated so much with his role as Red was the character being driven by grief. Cage informed his performance with his own personal sense of loss, and according to the actor himself, based elements of his performance on the golem of Jewish folklore, bringing his own fixation on the occult into play once again. Cage’s fingerprints might be conceptual, but by informing the performance on multiple levels with his own interests and experiences, Red took on elements of Cage.

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance

Though Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider was not well-received, its sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, came off far worse. Criticized on practically every level, the comic book sequel marked Cage’s last outing as the titular cursed hero, although it also marked a shift to a much more Cage-like personality for Johnny Blaze. Again, there are the elements of the occult that Cage is personally interested in, and there’s also the major connection to his own love of comic books, but the very characterization of Blaze became much more like Cage’s own personality in Spirit of Vengeance.

In Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Johnny Blaze becomes less inhibited and more intense. There are moments when Cage’s natural intensity begins to shine through, and his trademarked manic laughter can even be heard several times throughout the movie. Though Ghost Rider 3 will never happen and allow the evolution of Cage’s manic Johnny Blaze, the actor’s work in the Ghost Rider sequel came far closer to the Nicolas Cage that became famous for his over-the-top performances.

Moonstruck

Among Nicolas Cage’s earliest starring roles, Moonstruck saw the actor appear alongside Cher in the 1987 romantic comedy. Taken out of context, many of Cage’s outbursts in the film have been used to highlight his eccentricity and his impressive talents as an actor. Speaking about Moonstruck, Cage explained that he has based elements of his performance on German Expressionism of the silent film era, as well as attempted to approximate the voice of Jean Marais from the 1946 French film La Belle et la Bête. The actor was instructed to drop the voice, but the frenetic nature of one of Nicolas Cage’s best performances remains, and it highlights the actor’s own personal inspirations in a way that subtly reinforces his utterly unique nature as a performer.

Vampire’s Kiss

In what is considered Nicolas Cage’s most over-the-top performance, Vampire’s Kiss was a box office failure before achieving cult status. Playing Peter Loew, Cage demonstrates a man whose mental health declines as he becomes increasingly convinced that he’s been bitten by a vampire. The dramatic outbursts and exaggerated facial expressions have led to the consensus that Vampire’s Kiss is Nicolas Cage achieving peak Nicolas Cage – and while it may not be meta on the level of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Vampire’s Kiss remains an iconic part of Nicolas Cage‘s filmography.