Nicolas Cage Says He Has “3 or 4 More Lead Roles" Left Before Retiring

In conversation with The New Yorker, Nicolas Cage claims that he’s nearing the end of his film acting career. Say it ain’t so.

The actor can sense the end coming, which has caused him to rethink his entire future. “I did two or three very supporting roles [in that time]. So maybe three or four more lead roles,” Cage says.

Cage, who has appeared in at least one film for 37 consecutive years and counting, recently told Vanity Fair “I said what I’ve had to say with cinema […] I think I took film performance as far as I could.” And, that he has. What an unusually eccentric and memorable career he’s had.

Cage turned 60 in January and that has led him into thinking more and more about his legacy: “I was taking stock of how much time I had left. I thought, ‘Okay, my dad died at 75, I’m going to be turning 60. If I’m lucky, I have maybe a good 15 years and hopefully more. What do I want to do with those 15 years, using my father as the model?’ It occurred very clearly to me that I want to spend time with my family.”

Cage’s youngest daughter, August Francesca, was born in 2022— that event has led him to rethink the trajectory of his career. What’s next? His latest Shaman-like acting feat, in Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs,” is another bonkers performance from the actor. In it, he plays the serial killer from glam rock hell. His work in the film is hard to describe.

These last 11 years, he has starred in 45 films. Is that a record? Only Bruce Willis has made more in that time span. Cage has no doubt had a rather strange acting career, especially the last decade or so where his film choices have gotten weirder and weirder. He does go back to solemn indies like "Joe," and “Pig.” Then he’ll go fully manic in something like "Mandy.”

Ethan Hawke has stated that Cage is “the only actor since Marlon Brando that's actually done anything new with the art of acting; he's successfully taken us away from an obsession with naturalism into a kind of presentation style of acting that I imagine was popular with the old troubadours."

David Lynch has described Cage as “the jazz musician of American acting”. I love that description, because, much like Jazz, there’s an improv-like nature to the delivery of his performances that feels incredibly unpredictable and damn-near revolutionary.

There is a reason why Cage’s B-movies are better than, say, the straight-to-VOD fare that John Travolta and Willis have given us. It's because you can tell Cage is jumping into the role, fully invested and giving it all he’s got. It doesn’t seem to just be about the paycheck with him. He gets possessed by the roles.

Cage’s gonzo-style acting, which he refers to as Nouveau Shamanic, is the kind of advancement in the art of acting that we haven’t really seen otherwise since, probably, Brando going method in the late ‘50s. He has, more succinctly, summoned up his style as a hybrid of German Expressionism and "Western kabuki".

In Cage’s best performances, you watch a style of acting incompatible with the realism invading most movies these days; it’s entertaining, charismatic and, I’m being subtle here, wildly flamboyant. It’s feels like it stems from another dimension.

So, what have been his best performances? I’ll give you my personal 12, all wide-ranging, in films as diverse as  "Adaptation", "Leaving Las Vegas", "Raising Arizona," "Wild At Heart,” "Red Rock West," “Moonstruck,” “Bringing Out the Dead,” “Matchstick Men,” “Lord of War,” “Bad Lieutenant,” “Mandy,” “Pig” and “Dream Scenario.”