Nicolas Cage has narrowed down his entire filmography spanning over four decades to his top 5 favorite films.
Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Thursday, the Academy Award winner took a trip down memory lane with the host while promoting his new film, “Renfield.”
While Cage, whose real name is Nicolas Coppola, has some impressive blockbusters under his belt — including “National Treasure,” “Moonstruck,” and “The Rock” — the 59-year-old’s top five is comprised of his lesser-known work.
“I’m going to start with ‘Pig’ that is my favorite movie I have ever made,” Cage told Colbert. “I love ‘Mandy,’ the movie that Panos [Cosmatos] directed. I love ‘Bringing Out The Dead’ that Martin Scorsese directed. I loved ‘Bad Lieutenant’ [by] Werner Herzog. I loved a movie called ‘Joe’ that David Gordon Green directed.’
“I got ‘Face/Off,’” Colbert chimed in, prompting Cage to agree with the film selection.
“You know what is interesting about ‘Face/Off’ and I could have mentioned ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ because ‘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, but he was beginning to think that 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,” he explained.
“So I gotta act like a German expressionist silent movie star, and that was cool, like these facial expressions and whatnot. But ‘Face/Off’ was a big movie, a big studio movie that I made at Paramount, and I was able to use what I learned from this little ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ movie and put it in this giant movie. And it worked. And I was like, people really dig this. So I was very happy with those results.”
Cage went on to clarify his previous comments about identifying as a thespian and not an actor.
“I’m curious why is being pretentious is appealing to you?” Colbert joked.
“What I was saying was, of course you can call me an actor,” Cage explained. “And by the way, I never said, ‘don’t call me an actor. Call me a thespian.’ That’s what the clickbait universe was doing and put out there and somehow it got picked up by CNN. I’m not sure how it got picked up by CNN. I’m sure they have more important things to report on.”
“I see acting as storytelling and what it is is trying to get to the truth of a character,” the actor added.
Cage added that the first ever actor in Europe was called Thespis, who earned his stripes by vowing to tell stories truthfully rather than stick to the common narratives at the time.
“The word actor in Greek means hypocrite,” he said. “Well, I don’t want to be thought of as a hypocrite. I’m sorry if that sounds pretentious.”