UAMC looks into the mind of Nicolas Cage when Nicolas Cage goes “full Nicolas Cage”

Nicolas Cage has been a fixture of action movies far and wide since the golden era of the late ‘90s when he made The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off  (also known as the Beige Volvo Trilogy – read up on them here!) in the space of less than two years, Cage has been busy honing his own particular brand of ‘crazy’ ever since. Which, to say the least, we at the Ultimate Action Movie Club are huge fans of the Cage-ster going Cage-crazy.

Nicolas Cage Losing It

So much so, in fact, that a video entitled simply ‘Nicolas Cage losing his s**t’ has racked up an impressive 368,000 views on YouTube. No one does crazy quite like Cage – but have you ever wondered about the method behind his madness? What it takes to truly go ‘full Nicolas Cage’?

Nicolas Cage goes Full Nicolas Cage

Matt Miller over at Esquire has and he was lucky enough to get a chance to ask the man himself during an exclusive interview with the action movie legend. Cage didn’t disappoint either, offering up a lengthy explanation of the process that’s every bit as out there as you might have expected.

Rather than pick and choose excerpts to try and offer up the gist of what was said, here’s Cage’s entire, lengthy, explanation as to how it works and how it helps him hone his craft as an actor:

“The process is an interesting one that has kind of been developing over many years now. It’s one that requires a bit of imagination, but in this case possibly more feeling of going internal and prepping by kind of trying to plunge my own internal body, if you will, or whatever worlds I can go towards of memory and life experience. And then I’ll sort of get something, find something that breaks my heart, and I won’t share it with anybody. It’s a secret that only I have. It’s a secret that’s gonna be shared with the audience, and hopefully everyone in the audience will have individual connection to it. It’s not something that I can easily describe.

“But it is something that I surf with. I feel it throughout the day, knowing we’re getting to that point. Knowing we’re getting closer to, let’s call it 5:30 PMin Belgium, and I know in about 30 minutes, Panos is gonna call, “Action,” and now I’m 10 minutes into it and now I’m surfing the emotion again and I feel it in my fingertips and I feel it in my throat and then I let it go, because I don’t want to leave it in the locker room. Now we’re 10 minutes out, and then we’re five minutes out, and then I go into a trance, and then it’s very, very quiet and I don’t let anyone get in my face, and I go somewhere in a corner or wherever it is and I start psyching up. Now we’re two minutes out. Now we’re one minute out and we’re going, we’re going, going.

“And then it’s time, and it’s, “Action!” And then it’s just like out the gate, here it goes, whatever happens, happens. It’s on. And I’m not thinking about it, it’s just like a feeling, a lightning rod, a rush, and I don’t know where I am and I know that I’m not faking it and I know that it’s embarrassing and I know it’s naked and I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s coming out. That usually has something to do with some kind of heartbreak somewhere in my past.”

Nicolas Cage keeps Nicolas Cage-ing

Cage’s latest film, Mandy, has been earning rave reviews thanks to a suitably manic performance from the man itself. It comes as part of a renaissance of sorts for the actor, who earned rave reviews for his turn in the similarly bonkers Mom and Dad alongside Selma Blair. Cage will be returning to more familiar action movie territory with his next movie, Running with The Devil.

Written and directed by ex-Navy SEAL Jason Cabell and inspired by his own real-life experiences, the film sees Cage team up with Lawrence Fishburne as two Cartel heavies tasked with investigating the company’s drug supply chain after a cocaine shipment is compromised.

For more on Cage and his work on Mandy, check out the full Esquire interview here.

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