He divides opinion like no other actor and now, at 54, finds himself single for the first time in years. He talks about fatherhood, family and trying to deliver genuinely groundbreaking performances
Nicolas Cage is the greatest American actor working today, full stop. Not very long ago, such a claim would have got you laughed out of the room. Only Cage superfans said such things; in the eyes of the rest of the world, well, sure, he could act – he did win the 1996 Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, after all – but he was too eccentric, too laughably over the top, just too damn Cage-y to be taken seriously.
Ever since I saw him in his 1980s comedies – Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck and Raising Arizona – in which he played, respectively, a nasal-voiced teddy boy, an opera-loving baker and a cartoonish ex-con – I have been a Cage superfan. I had never seen anyone act like him before – wildly mannered but always heartfelt – and there was something about his fearless lurch towards the ridiculous to achieve something unique, and maybe even glorious, that struck me as inspiring. If actors were pop songs, Cage would be Bohemian Rhapsody. As a shy 10-year-old, I would practise his grandiose speeches and even more grandiose gestures from Moonstruck in front of the mirror: “I ain’t no freaking monument to justice!” I would shout, lifting my arm to the sky. It felt exciting. But thanks to the endless schlocky horror movies he makes these days, coupled with all those internet supercuts compiling his notorious “Cage Rage” freak-outs from various movies (“Nicolas Cage’s Cagiest Moments!”), he is too often regarded as, if not exactly a guilty pleasure, then at least an ironic one. And it is hard to argue the genius of a man who fills his CV with movies such as Season of the Witch and Ghost Rider.
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