Nicolas Cage

Flanked by a very funny Pedro Pascal, the movie nearly buckles under its own weight at times but possesses enough goofy charm to validate this breezy exercise ...

Cage thus gets a chance to live out the espionage-type roles he's played for real, a scenario he approaches with method zeal and no small amount of terror. But said fan, Javi (Pascal), brings plenty of baggage to the situation as the known head of a crime cartel, with a pair of US government agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz Directed and co-written by Tom Gormican (who has one other feature to his credit), the film requires Cage to be an extremely good sport, introducing him as a nearly washed-up star missing what he keeps describing as the possible role of a lifetime.

The actor, who already has two sons from his previous marriages, shared the news in a preview of his upcoming appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show on 26 April.

They had planned to name a son Akira Francesco, after Cage’s uncle. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. “My uncle – the director Francis Ford Coppola – has decided to change his name to Francesco,” he explained. Cage’s father, August Coppola, died in 2009. “I’m thrilled, it’s going to be the biggest adventure of my life.” “And her name, because of ‘Across the Universe’, her name is going to be Lennon Augie. Augie after my father,” he said.

Nicolas Cage revealed he and wife Riko Shibata are having a baby girl, and they are naming her Lennon Augie after John Lennon and the actor's father, ...

It’s going to be the biggest adventure of my life.” “The parents-to-be are elated!” his publicist told People at the time. “I’m thrilled.

The much meme-d actor takes a meta satire just seriously enough.

Too often in Massive Talent, Gormican tries to pull Cage toward the bit, doing things like saddling Cage with an imaginary friend who is just the actor at a younger age, made to bray and howl like a Nicolas Cage windup toy sold by some bro version of Super Yaki. It’s almost as if the director can’t see the wonderful little thing actually happening in the film: Cage is transcending the joke while gently acknowledging it. The Cage mega-stan who orchestrated this whole thing is Javi (Pedro Pascal), who seems like a nice, if strange, guy who just wants to make a movie with his hero. Facing an existential crisis (and a heap of debt), Cage accepts the birthday party offer and heads to Spain. As the film rambles along, it does, on enough occasion, remind us not of the Cage caricature who has plagued film discourse throughout the 2000s, but of Cage’s real, unique appeal. Such questions swirl in one’s mind when watching the new film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (in theaters now), in which Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage, a parody of a parody that is sweet and sensitive at the center. Directed by Tom Gormican and written by Gormican and Kevin Etten, the film is an opportunity to address Cage’s acolytes and sycophants entirely on his own terms—as if their assessment of him ever wasn’t. One hopes that the film, equal parts winsome and dull, will finally put an end to this chapter in the Cage saga.

Movie review: In 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,' Nicolas Cage plays himself as a has-been actor who is invited by a superfan arms dealer (Pedro ...

In its broad strokes, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a fairly by-the-numbers action comedy, one that sometimes wears Cage’s presence like a talisman against the bad juju of slipshod storytelling. The young girl he needs to save happens to be around the same age as his daughter (played by Lily Sheen, who is not actually Nicolas Cage’s daughter but is in fact Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen’s daughter), whom he loves but has alienated through his self-absorption. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent presents us with a Cage who’s reached a dead end personally and professionally, but it also poignantly suggests that the dead end in question came a long, long time ago. Meanwhile, Javi is being staked out by two CIA agents (Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish), who believe he’s responsible for the recent kidnapping of the Catalan president’s daughter. What makes Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent special, then, is not so much that Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage but that the film presents us with a Nicolas Cage who spends a lot of time aspiring to be more like, well, “Nicolas Cage” — or as the film puts it, “Nick fuckin’ yahow! His characters are often trying to emulate or live up to an ideal — whether that be Elvis in Wild at Heart and Honeymoon in Vegas, Humphrey Bogart in Dog Eat Dog, Fabian in Peggy Sue Got Married, or simply the concept of domestic, child-filled bliss in Raising Arizona. Aspiration is the ideology that underlies his whole star persona.

The Leaving Las Vegas star, 58, has two sons from previous relationships: Kal-El, 16, with ex-wife Alice Kim, and Weston, 31, with actress Christina Fulton.

Nicolas Cage has revealed he is expecting a baby girl with wife Riko Shibata. Nicolas Cage reveals gender of baby he is expecting with wife Riko Shibata

If there was ever a movie made for staunch Nicolas Cage fans, then, of course, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is it. The action-comedy meta caper ...

It has to be said that the script can veer into the realms of formulaic, with some of the action scenes losing momentum in act three. As billed, the movie celebrates Nicolas’ long, genre-hopping career, and the references to his oeuvre are rife and satisfying. Nicolas is loath to accept his new chum is actually a deranged metaphorical James Bond villain, and, as things turn out, the truth is somewhat more complex.

NICOLAS Cage has revealed that he is having a baby girl with his fifth wife Riko Shibat.The actor, 58, announced he is "going to have a little girl" a.

the actor's rep said. Nicolas tied the knot with Riko on on February 16, 2021 in a "very small and intimate wedding at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas," according to a rep for Cage. The star said is was his "favourite song ever written" and went on to explain that the track meant a great deal to him. The Con Air actor said The Beatles hold a special place in his heart and revealed that he felt "frozen, paralysed by the music" the first time he heard Across The Universe on the radio. The star explained it will be a tribute to the late John Lennon and his late father August 'Augie' Coppola. The actor, 58, announced he is "going to have a little girl" as he appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Thursday.

Tom Gormican, the director of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” narrates a sequence featuring the star and Pedro Pascal.

Discussing the sequence, Gormican said that Pascal had a lot of weight on his shoulders. But Javi won’t allow that, creating a performance exercise with Nick that forces him to showcase his craft. In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies.

Can you picture The Matrix with Nicolas Cage in place of Keanu Reeves? What if he played Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings? Ah, what could have been...

As for The Lord of the Rings, Slash Film reports that Cage was offered the role of Aragorn before it went to Viggo Mortensen. I don’t know if I can unsee the mental image of Nic Cage leading the hobbits on a grand journey and slicing up orcs. Before Keanu Reeves was tapped to star in The Matrix as Neo, the role was offered to Cage, but he turned it down. So there is a huge disparity between that Nick Cage in Massive Talent and the Nic Cage sitting in front of you right now.”

The Leaving Las Vegas star, 58, has two sons from previous relationships: Kal-El, 16, with ex-wife Alice Kim, and Weston, 31, with actress Christina Fulton.

Nicolas Cage has revealed he is expecting a baby girl with wife Riko Shibata. Nicolas Cage reveals gender of baby he is expecting with wife Riko Shibata

It's time to unleash the Cage. Nicolas Cage is back - and this time he is playing himself. Yes. Really.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent has already had its premiere at the popular SXSW Film Festival on March 12 and received rave reviews. What is the cast of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent When is Nicolas Cage’s latest movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent released in the UK?

Nicolas Cage revealed the gender of the first baby that he and wife Riko Shibata are expecting together during an appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show."

Cage is about to become a father for the third time. They had a name ready if the baby ended up being a boy, too. Cage revealed that he and wife Riko Shibata, who announced they're having their first child together in January 2022, are expecting a baby girl.

"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" stars Nicolas Cage playing a fictionalized version of himself who swears constantly.

“That’s really where my heart is with the film,” Cage told EW. “That’s not a direction I gave him,” writer-director Tom Gormican told Entertainment Weekly. “We call action on this thing, and we’re watching the scene go down. Cage as Nicky yells “I’m Nick f—iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing-ow-wow Cage!” when trying to psyche himself up.

Watch an interview with 'Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent' star and Oscar winner Nicolas Cage for Deadline's video series The Film That Lit My Fuse.

It is one of the more introspective installments of Fuse that we’ve seen in a good long time. He is coming off an acclaimed turn as a truffle farmer in the indie film Pig and is getting strong notices for Massive Talent. Here, Cage describes the influences and breakthroughs that informed his long career. Every installment asks the same five questions.

In “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” Nicolas Cage tackles one of his most out-there roles yet: a capital-A Actor named Nicolas Cage, who's adored ...

“See, ‘over the top’ is one of those things that doesn’t work with me, because I don’t believe in such a thing,” Cage says on the film’s commentary track. Playing off the “Satanic panic” that swept the U.S. in the ’80s, this psychotronic revenge epic represents the apogee of excess, finding Cage bathed in blood and brandishing a gnarly hand-forged sword as Red, a logger who takes on a sicko religious cult after they burn his girlfriend alive. (The movie is a clear model for Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” in which Christian Bale’s character believes he’s a serial killer.) Cage’s Peter Loew is a despicable character, rendered all the more alienating by the actor’s arch mock-pompous accent and myriad tics, and yet, the actor succeeds in making him sympathetic even at his worst — and Peter does some pretty extreme things, from raping his assistant to swallowing a live cockroach. This demented and widely derided remake of the 1973 cult classic has more to it than its reputation suggests, although it’s no wonder people were so tough on it at the time: Cage is intentionally offputting as an alpha-male police officer who elbows his way in to a secluded island community, where women hold all the power — a dynamic borrowed from the bees they cultivate — and don’t take too kindly to his intrusive investigation. So he swung hard in the opposite direction with this biting social satire, in which Cage more than embodies an unstable New York yuppie who gets freaked out by a bat in his apartment and convinces himself that he’s becoming a vampire. In “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” Nicolas Cage tackles one of his most out-there roles yet: a capital-A Actor named Nicolas Cage, who’s adored by fans all over the world for the intensity and eccentricity he brings to his work. In a way, playing dual roles in “Adaptation” — as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his sell-out twin brother Donald — could be conceived as a dry run for Tom Gormican’s meta action comedy. Witness the scene where he snatches the oxygen tube from an old woman’s nose to force the information out of her caregiver, before whipping out his Magnum and going all “Dirty Harry” on them both. With a hooker for a girlfriend and a nasty habit of snorting his way through half the drugs his colleagues have confiscated — which accounts for the iguanas he keeps hallucinating — Cage’s Lt. McDonagh is as far from “by the book” as they come. The movie was co-produced by shlockbuster shingles Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla Oasis, companies that bet on has-been movie stars and which have been feeding Cage bad material (like “Drive Angry” and “Stolen”) ever since. And yet, no matter how lousy the result (from “Season of the Witch” to “Dog Eat Dog,” the disappointments far outnumber the keepers), there’s no denying that Cage gives it 110%. When Cage is the star, that all-eyes-on-him quality can work wonders, forcing everyone else in the cast to adapt to his energy while Cage takes charge (as in the godawful “Army of One,” in which he upstages even Russell Brand as God). But when he appears in a supporting role, the rest of the ensemble had better watch out, as Cage makes off with the movie, as in this abysmal thriller directed by his brother, Christopher Coppola. Yes, the siblings are nephews to Francis, of “The Godfather” fame, though you’d never guess filmmaking ran in the family from the all-around amateurishness on display here.

"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" star Nicolas Cage dished about Hollywood not offering him comedic roles anymore.

“People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one,” the Academy Award winner said. Per the Los Angeles Times, Cage pitched the idea of his Nick character making out with Nicky in “hopes that scenes like those remind people, including studio executives, of his unique comedy chops,” the reporter noted. “I’ve been scratching my head a little bit as to why Hollywood wasn’t offering me comedies anymore,” Cage said.

Half eccentric artist and half cinematic provocateur, the cult of Nicolas Cage has long-flourished in contemporary cinema, with his 1988 movie Vampire's ...

A cash-strapped desperate father, the Nicolas Cage of Gormican’s film touches base with the real-life actor whilst sensationalising the eccentric features that make him such a cultural icon, with his signature Cage rage occasionally coming out throughout the movie. Such also happens to be the lifeblood that fuels the heart of Tom Gormican’s brand new action-comedy, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, featuring Cage as a faux-realistic version of his own self. Such a persona has muddied such recent progressive performances in Michael Sarnoski’s Pig and Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy as Cage struggles to wrestle with the economic value of his own absurdism.

Nicolas Cage has had a wild career – the Total Film team ranks his 10 best movies.

The film is a little bit true crime, a little bit American Assassin, and a whole lot of fantastical neon-colored insanity. The film is a dark romantic blood-soaked musical comedy that borrows from The Wizard of Oz and Elvis Presley's discography. He's then forced to leave the comfort of his reclusive life and return to Portland in order to get her back – which involves kicking a whole lot of ass. Travolta stars as FBI agent Sean Archer who undergoes a transplant to have the face of a homicidal maniac named Castor Troy (Cage) grafted across his in order to go undercover. Cage credits Wild at Heart as the movie that helped him get away from method acting and move towards his improvisational style, thanks in part to Lynch's spontaneous script re-writes during production. The film stars Cage as a former Portland-based chef named Rob who lives alone in a cabin deep in the Oregon wilderness and hunts for truffles with the aid of his prized foraging pig. The actor plays Cameron Poe, a newly paroled ex-con who just wants to get home to his family. Raising Arizona, the Coen Brothers' second-ever film, stars a 22-year-old Cage as an ex-convict who ends up marrying the police officer who took his mugshots at intake. The only scary element of the film is Cage's ever-changing Woody Woodpecker-like hair, which he insisted should get bigger as his character became more stressed. Though Cage is arguably known best for his over-the-top acting in equally over-the-top movies (see also: " Not the Bees!"), his strongest performances tend to pop up in gritty, romantic dramas. The explosive film somehow culminates with Cage, at home, sitting naked in a chair while strumming a guitar. It's an action film on steroids: necks snap, cars explode mid-air, blood sprays in slo-mo, and the bad guys are armed with literal rockets filled with enough lethal-grade toxins to wipe out the entirety of San Francisco.

But filmmaker Tom Gormican also slipped in a few covert references, allusions to past films meant to tantalize only the most astute of Cage aficionados. Spoiler ...

So he is kind of becoming the character.” That is a direct reference to Face/Off.” This 1997 John Woo action shoot-'em-up gets a lot of attention in Unbearable Weight, including ranking as the No. 1 favorite movie of Pedro Pascal's suspected cartel kingpin.

From Con Air and The Rock, to Mandy and Face/Off, Empire counts down Nicolas Cage's top 10 greatest movies.

Marking Nicolas Cage's official rebirth as an action hero (it was the unlikely follow-up to his Leaving Las Vegas Oscar win months earlier), this is a hard-granite slab of pure action movie gold — not to mention, the rare Michael Bay film to earn a prestigious Criterion Collection release. Cage's odd-couple double-act with Sean Connery is glorious, his obsession with chemistry a delight ("I'm a chemical super-freak, actually"), and, by the time of his slow-motion, arms-aloft, flares-in-the-air finale, his status as a bona fide action movie icon confirmed. His mournful turn as porcine-loving chef-turned-hermit-truffle-hunter Robin Feld in Pig stands out as the very best of his understated roles, searching for justice after a brutal pig-napping, an exile reluctantly making his return from to the cut-throat world of Portland haute-cuisine. Criminally, Cage was the only one of the film's core cast not to be nominated for an Oscar – Cher and Olympia Dukakis both scored big on the night, while Vincent Gardenia was nominated for Best Supporting Actor – but he shines regardless in one of his most romantic roles to date. As soon-to-be ex-con Cameron Poe, desperate to get home to his wife and kid after being banged up for years and now stuck on a plane with the world's most unhinged criminals, he is the everyman and the wild man, putting his principles first, agog at the chaos swirling around him, risking it all to do the right thing – over and over again. Like a lot of great films, sometimes it takes a little while for everything to come into focus. Concealed in an obscure corner of Cage's vast, prolific filmography is this hidden gem, Red Rock West, which stands as strong as any of his work. Where do you start with Con Air? It's a film that knows how ridiculous it is, how insane it is, how – frankly – fucking awesome it is, every gloriously stupid action sequence one-upping the last. There’s nobody like Nicolas Cage. The entity formerly known as Nicolas Kim Coppola is both one of the most recognisable screen actors in Hollywood, and also a total enigma – more myth than man, beloved for his wild, unpredictable choices and full-on Cage-rage freakouts. It's hilariously out-there, but also a disturbing outpouring of unabashed grief, a man pushed beyond the brink. To mark that occasion, Empire’s Cage scholars present an official ranking of his top 10 movies – ones that cover various facets of his performances and personas. Ben's existential dereliction gives him a believable sense of showy social abandon that makes his rapid decline kind of entertaining, in a profoundly uncomfortable way.

Strange stories have surrounded Cage for years. One is that he won $200,000 (£155,000) gambling in one night and donated it to an orphanage while another is ...

“And there were no bats in the cave,” Cage clarified. Cage imagined himself sitting in the cave, “totally naked” and drinking nigori with his wife. While filming one of the National Treasure films in North Dakota, Cage heard of a cave for sale and considered buying it. “I didn’t teach him the words,” Cage admitted. Cage said that he approached the table feeling lucky. “I just knew I had it.

The Leaving Las Vegas star, 58, has two sons from previous relationships: Kal-El, 16, with ex-wife Alice Kim, and Weston, 31, with actress Christina Fulton.

He said: "Her name, because of Across The Universe (the song by The Beatles), is going to be Lennon Augie, Augie after my father, and I’ll call her Lenny for short." He also revealed her name will include tributes to Beatles musician John Lennon and his late father, August Coppola, who died in 2009. Appearing on US chat show The Kelly Clarkson Show, Cage said: "I'm going to announce some big news for everyone.

Nicolas Cage is an actor unlike any other, and we have the performances listed here to prove it.

From donning fake vampire teeth to eating a (real) cockroach, to running through the streets of New York screaming “I’m a Vampire,” Cage fully commits to the role and takes an expressionistic approach to portraying a man’s descent into madness. An unapologetic romantic, Ripley is the sensitive bad boy who seems like he’d write flowery poetry to his lover in the blood of his enemies. This mostly forgotten 1989 film about a bad boy literary agent who believes he’s been turned into vampire has roared back to life in the YouTube era, as film fans giddily shared scene after scene of Cage’s most unhinged acting to date. Donning a snakeskin leather jacket that’s as suited for power metal as it is to Elvis ballads, Nic Cage’s Sailor Ripley from David Lynch’s wickedly fun Wild at Heart is one of the most iconic characters of Cage’s career. Cage plays Ripley like a modern day James Dean, steely but sensitive, and it’s hoot to watch him thrash around or sincerely belt out “Love Me Tender” without a shred of irony. Playing real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, Cage offers a masterclass in sweaty, worry-driven neuroses in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. To make things even better, Cage also plays Charlie’s fictional, dim-witted, happy-go-lucky brother Donald as well, and watching Charlie react to Donald’s casual perusal of screenwriting is comedic gold. Cage’s cartoonish antics fit like a glove within the heightened reality of the movie, and his affable presence makes you root for a character who has stolen a baby, something that should be unforgivable. Watch Cage twitch and convulse as he tries to keep the spirit of vengeance from feeding on bad men. A modern day and winning vehicle for manic Cage, Mandy is a gnarly little psychedelic revenge flick that finds the actor going medieval on some acid casualty cultists that killed his girlfriend. Another comic book film featuring Cage, Kick-Ass expertly utilizes the actor as Big Daddy, a loving, dotting father who also trains his young daughter to be ruthless killing machine. What you may call a “crazy Cage performance” is just an expressionist interpretation inspired equally by Kabuki theater and Douglas Fairbanks, okay? Throughout it all, he’s remained dedicated to his craft, making interesting choices that may seem absurd to some but are always informed by his deep knowledge of cinema history.

Nicolas Cage just had his very meta, and apparently very excellent movie hit the big screen this week, highlighting what we already knew about the actor.

That leads Nicolas Cage having to channel different characters he’s played over the years to take the guy out. But then Kimmel framed it in reference to the orphanage donation and Cage said it was “four times” that number. In conjunction with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent releasing, Nicolas Cage did some promotion for the film and while getting into the conversation was able to let on some very Cage-y things. He told a story about running $200 into $20,000 at a roulette table and then immediately donating it all to an orphanage. Nicolas Cage just had his very meta, and apparently very excellent movie hit the big screen this week, highlighting what we already knew about the actor. And then he got into it about a two-headed snake he’d bought when an unnamed seller thought it would be right in the actor’s wheelhouse.

Nicolas Cage's self-aware new comeback movie, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is a fantastic ride. No wonder Rotten Tomatoes (and reviewers) love ...

And to be fair, if there’s any actor who can pull off being both in a mindless action film and an indie darling simultaneously, it’s Nicolas Cage. It’s a rare movie star who can argue they’ve been an A-list hitmaker over the course of four decades, but the unbearable weight of his massive talent has never held Cage down. It’s great to see Pascal in a role that shows his face; like Cage, he’s been on the blockbuster circuit as the titular (albeit helmeted) Mandalorian. Also, like Cage, he’s known for his over-the-top moments and the memes that spring from them — google “Pascal Game of Thrones” to get a taste. Meanwhile, other characters argue whether his 1990s fare is superior to his 2000s fare or his more recent work, like “The Croods.” Famous props from his films turn up in unexpected places, and sometimes expected ones. But “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” believes disguising itself as an indie-esque, character-driven Oscar-bait film will appeal to both adults and the teenage crowds. Nicolas Cage’s extraordinarily self-aware comeback movie, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” isn’t quite meta enough to be titled “Nicolas Cage’s Extraordinarily Self-Aware Comeback Movie.” But it’s close.

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“One time he was on a plane that I was on. “So he had always been this big figure to me, and I was so nervous to meet him. Lily Sheen, who plays his daughter in the movie, knows a thing or two about being the child of a famous person. He has to go from being a narcissistic, career-minded actor into a sensitive family man’. So I said, ‘OK, well that’s a good argument, this is a movie, this isn’t really me’. The five-times married star has sons Kal-El, 16, and Weston, 31, from previous relationships, and in January it was confirmed he was expecting a baby with wife Riko Shibata. “Listen, I did run,” he admits.