Nicolas Cage explains why he left Hollywood: 'I don’t know if I’d want to go back'
Fox News
Nicolas Cage, once a box office draw, said he can identify with his character in the film "Pig." The star is now eager to take on independent films.
Cage is no longer the box office draw he was when headlined comic book films like 2007’s "Ghost Rider" and Jerry Bruckheimer blow ’em ups like 1996’s "The Rock" and 1997’s "Con Air." He’s spent the last decade or so popping up in low-budget fare, some of it forgettable ("Kill Chain," anyone?), some criminally under-seen, as was the case with his tender turn in David Gordon Green’s "Joe." But Cage says even when he was riding high he sometimes bristled at the commercial constraints that were imposed on his performances. "When I was making Jerry Bruckheimer movies back-to-back, that was just a high-pressure game. There were a lot of fun moments, but at the same time, there was also ‘We wrote this line. It has to be said this way,'" Cage remembers. "They’d put a camera on you and photograph you, and order you: ‘Now say the roller skate training wheels line.’ I’d say, ‘I’ll do that but I’d also like to try it this way.’ On independent movies, you have more freedom to experiment and be fluid. There’s less pressure and there’s more oxygen in the room." "Pig" was an opportunity for Cage to remind movie-watchers that he is capable of doing subtle work after a stretch of scaling operatic heights in films such as "Mandy" and "Prisoners of the Ghostland," the latter of which had him acting out what it would be like to have a testicle blown off.More Related News
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