From winning an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas to becoming Hollywood’s highest-paid action star in the 1990s, Nicolas Cage's rollercoaster career has seen it all.
Back this week in Renfield, he’s playing a role he was born to play — Dracula. But there’s more to him than the Prince of Darkness. An actor who has turned OTT into a fine art, The National explores 10 of his most impressively zany performances.
1. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Cage was already well-established in films like Birdy and Moonstruck by the time he gave his first — and arguably greatest — maverick performance. Poking fun at the Yuppie culture of the 1980s, he plays Peter Loew, a literary agent whose chaotic lifestyle and increasingly loose grip on his sanity becomes more pronounced after an encounter with a bat.
Before long, he starts to believe he’s a vampire, leading to that immortal scene where he runs down the street screaming: “I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire!” Clearly prophetic — given his role in Renfield — Cage even ate two live cockroaches on set.
2. Deadfall (1993)
Cage isn’t even the lead in this low-budget crime thriller, but true to form, he steals every scene he’s in. And given this is a film that co-stars Charlie Sheen, James Coburn and Peter Fonda, that’s no mean feat.
Directed by his brother Christopher Coppola, Cage is relentlessly off-the-chain in this noir-ish tale. He plays the moustachioed goon Eddie dialled up to 11 (or should that be 111?). Whether he’s raging at clothes hangers, having a tantrum on his bed or adopting a weird Munchkin voice, babbling along, it’s totally manic. Like he says to Coburn’s character: “The Joker’s wild, man!”
3. Mandy (2018)
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Vampire’s Kiss (1988). Photo: MGM -
Deadfall (1993). Photo: Trimark Pictures -
Mandy (2018). Photo: RLJE Pictures -
Mom and Dad (2017). Photo: Momentum Pictures -
Kiss Of Death (1995). Photo: 20th Century Studios -
The Wicker Man (2006). Photo: Warner Bros -
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2021). Photo: Lionsgate Films -
Face/Off (1997). Photo: Touchstone Pictures -
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). Photo: Lionsgate Films -
Zandalee (1991). Photo: Artisan Entertainment
It’s pretty rare when Cage losing it isn’t the most bonkers thing about a film. Panos Cosmatos’s nightmarish fantasy sees Cage on the rampage after his wife is murdered, chasing down a religious cult leader and his cannibalistic biker gang.
His character Red Miller is a recovering alcoholic lumberjack who gets the traditional Cage Rage scene, where he hits the bottle after mourning Mandy. But the real madness sets in when he starts to hunt the bikers with a crossbow and a battle axe, whilst hallucinating. It's a film known for blowing audiences' minds and one that few actors — bar Cage — would dare to take on.
4. Mom and Dad (2017)
In this dark comedy, parents violently turn on their children due to an unexplained static being transmitted through radios and TV screens. As Indiewire so delicately put it, this was “Nicolas Cage in full-on nutzoid mode”.
Like the flashback scene where his suburban white-collar father Brent starts singing the Hokey Cokey whilst rampaging with a mallet. Or the extensive chaos in the house, as he’s chasing his children relentlessly, beating his daughter’s boyfriend and disintegrating his own parents by running over them. Total and utter mayhem and the sort of film Cage was built for.
5. Kiss Of Death (1995)
Another remake makes the list, a muscular mid-90s take on the 1947 Henry Hathaway-directed noir. The original starred Richard Widmark as a psychopath who pushes an old woman to her death down the stairs in her wheelchair. But it didn’t have Cage, cast here as Little Junior, the son of a mafiosi.
He bench-presses dancers in his father’s club. And he beats people to death to the sound of House of Pain’s Jump Around, whilst wearing a plastic mac to ensure he gets no blood on his clothes.
6. The Wicker Man (2006)
Neil LaBute’s remake of the classic Pagan horror is, in all honesty, a terrible film — but, once again, Cage’s penchant for over-the-top acting is irresistible. He plays Edward Malus, a sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl, who gets drawn to an island off the Pacific North-West.
If he’s not screaming (“How’d it get burned? How’d it get burned?”), he’s punching and kicking women in this shrouded community. The film’s culminating sacrifice must still be one of the most impersonated moments in Cage’s entire career, as a helmet is placed on his head and bees are poured inside. “Not the bees! Not the bees!”
7. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
In the end, Cage had to play himself, right? In this action-comedy, he’s an exaggerated version of the Hollywood star, his career on the slide and his personal life a mess. Like Jean-Claude Van Damme, who sent himself up in JCVD, it’s a good-natured bit of self-ribbing.
And Cage fans can get a kick at all the Easter egg references to his career, from Face/Off to Wild At Heart. Although as meta-movies go, it doesn’t top his sublime Oscar-nominated turn in Adaptation, as the film’s screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his fictional annoying twin.
8. Face/Off (1997)
An action hero in the mid-90s, Cage was on a Hollywood high, getting paid $20 million a movie. In the midst of all this, he teamed up with John Travolta for John Woo’s mind-bending action-thriller, in which Travolta’s policeman undertakes a radical face transplant surgery to impersonate Cage’s criminal Castor Troy and vice versa.
It all gets very bizarre, in the best ways possible, leading to some immortal lines. The opening, as he dresses as a priest and sings "Hallelujah!" shows just how wild he can be even in a mainstream movie.
9. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
A remake of Abel Ferrara’s controversial classic directed by the peerless Werner Herzog — what could go wrong? As it turns out, not much.
Cage’s reworking of Harvey Keitel’s tormented policeman turned the character on its head. Addicted to painkillers, and in debt to bookmakers, he’s not the man you really want on your beat.
The moment where, in search of info, he berates an old lady, removes her oxygen tube and threatens her nurse with his gun, is still high on the Cage-O-Meter of chaos.
10. Zandalee (1991)
A misfire of a drama it may be, but Zandalee adds another unforgettable clip or two to Cage’s showreel of outlandish characters. Here, he plays Johnny, a painter who truly believes in his own genius, comparing his longevity to Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.
Embroiled in a torrid affair with Erika Anderson’s titular character, the moment he starts ripping all his paintings up, covering himself in paint and yelling “Black it all out!” is another gilt-edged Cage moment. Even in a sub-standard B movie, you can’t take your eyes off him.
Renfield is in cinemas from Thursday
