Nicolas Cage Talks About The Craziest Thing He Did For A Movie Role

Nicolas Cage is known for his ability to push himself beyond limits in order to ensure a perfect interpretation and delivery of the roles he takes on. Recently, the actor reminisced about his preparations for the 1988 movie, Vampire’s Kiss, where he played the role of Peter Loew, a man who believes he is transforming into a vampire.

The actor delivered one of the most talked about scenes in the film, which featured his character eating a live cockroach. The 59-year-old revealed in an interview while promoting his 2023 movie, Renfield, that he wanted to make the scene appear as realistic as possible; thus that particular “delicacy.”

Nicolas Cage reveals that eating the cockroach was a ‘business’ decision

Cage was just starting up his career at the time, but now that he has enjoyed long-lasting popularity in the industry, the 59-year-old revealed to Yahoo! Entertainment that he holds a different view about such an act. “I’ll never do that again,” Cage said. “I’m sorry I did it at all.”

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While recording the DVD commentary for the movie, the actor claimed that he viewed eating the live cockroach as a necessity for his work then. “When people see the cockroach go in my mouth,” he explained, “[they] really react.” Additionally, Cage mentioned that director Robert Bierman instructed him to eat the live cockroach twice, which he believes was a practical joke, because the director claimed he had intended to use the first take in the film regardless.

Nicolas Cage mentioned the best movie of his career

During an appearance on an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Cage was asked to name some of his favorite movies from his career. “I’m gonna start with Pig, that’s my favorite movie I ever made. I love Mandy, the movie Panos [Cosmatos] directed,” he told Colbert. “I love Bringing Out the Dead, which Martin Scorsese directed. I loved Bad Lieutenant [from director] Werner Herzog. I love the movie called Joe, that David Gordon Green directed.”

However, the show host realized that some movies did not make the actor’s list, so he decided to remind him and point some of them out, and Cage responded by talking a bit more about some of the projects. “Oh, I love Face/Off... You know, what was interesting about Face/Off — and I could’ve mentioned Vampire’s Kiss,” Cage explained. “Vampire’s Kiss was a little movie I made where I was able to explore my more abstract dreams with film performance. I was sadly playing a character who was losing his mind and was beginning to think he was the vampire from the original Nosferatu movie. And when you’re playing a character who’s losing his mind, he can believe he’s Nosferatu. So I got to act like a German expressionistic silent movie star.”

Cage further revealed that he brought some experience he got from Vampire’s Kiss into Face Off. “And that was cool, these facial expressions and whatnot,” he said. “But Face/Off was a big studio movie that I made at Paramount, and I was able to use what I learned from [it] and put it in this giant movie, and it worked. I was like, ‘People really dig this.'”