Nicolas Cage Quotes

God bless the popcorn film. Especially movies where you can take the kids, because I remember looking forward to seeing these movies with my parents, and if I can give that back, I'm gonna do it.

I always add a year to myself, so I'm prepared for my next birthday. So when I was 39, I was already 40.

I've always had a soft spot for comic books.

Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it's considered a quality and something to behold.

I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.

I got a little tired of movies where I had to shoot people. I got to thinking about the power of film and what that power is. The power is in fact that it really can change people's minds.

First of all the criteria that I have that goes into any career decision is whether or not I have the life experience, emotional resources to play the part truthfully or the imagination. Second, would be the director.

I invite the entire spectrum, shall we call it, of feeling. Because that is my greatest resource as a film actor. I need to be able to feel everything, which is why I refuse to go on any kind of medication. Not that I need to! But my point is, I wouldn't even explore that, because it would get in the way of my instrument.

You often feel like you are on a high wire with no net productions because you have to rely on spontaneity and come up with ideas on the spur of the moment - and then what happens is that there is electricity to it that gets caught.

We've become so glorified in the movie-star system that it's become this artificial royalty. The truth is that we're circus clowns.

I think that 'Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance' was mentally taxing, if only because I had to go to a Christmas party shortly after I had wrapped photography in Romania at two in the morning as the Ghost Rider. The invitation had a Christmas ornament on it with Ghost Rider's face on it as a tree.

I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?

I've gotten pretty good at leaving characters on the set. I go home and try to relax and regroup and be ready for the next day.

Just because you're a man doesn't mean that you can't raise your kid. I think that families should stay together, but if you are a single father, don't give up no matter what they say.

I was thinking about being more global in my work, which means trying more foreign countries and working with foreign filmmakers, hoping they would give me a new take on my work, a new point of view, reinvent me in some way.

I really think it's important that my beliefs don't impinge upon what you get from the movie. It's your opinion that matters and it's far more interesting than mine.

The movies I cannot go without and that I watch annually are 'A Clockwork Orange,' 'Scarface' and 'Fantasia.'

I'm sticking my tongue out in scenes to try to make that work in 3D. I'm thinking I'll try to get my tongue all the way out to the second row of the audience.

I know what it's like to meet someone you admire and have them be a complete jerk.

I've always maintained that I see myself as a student. There's always something to learn and be challenged by and hopefully grow from.

When I won the Oscar, I made a point of actively going against that and doing adventure films like 'Con Air' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds,' not what would be expected.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

Look, I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters.

I love it all. I don't want to go through my career with one hand tied behind my back. I love making kids happy. I love the midnight audience. I like intense dramas. And I like high-adrenaline action films.

When I started experimenting with fantasy and horror films and looking for characters who had some sort of emotional or mental difficulty, I saw opportunities to express my music - dare I say art - in a way that I could get a bit surreal - like Francis Bacon's screaming pope, or Edvard Munch with [The Scream].

I do enjoy animated movies. I really love anime and movies like 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

I'm not a trained actor. I'm someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own.

Every great story seems to begin with a snake.

Sometimes people think I'm wearing a wig when I'm not wearing a wig, and then sometimes they think I'm not wearing a wig when I am wearing a wig.

I generally enjoy the rehearsal process because that's where you can share your ideas, get your thoughts and feelings out and see whether or not they're going to land, whether or not people are going to agree with them, particularly the director. So you can sort out in that process any elements that need to be sorted out before you're on the set, and of course that saves time and it also makes everyone more comfortable working together.

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I'm in my fifthies, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance.

I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-ray gives you more options.

People are losing jobs, people need to be entertained, and I want to make movies that parents and children can look forward to seeing, that can become a kind of family ritual.

I will promise you that if I can give you two good scenes
which is what I always try to do in every movie
then I feel like I'm doing my job.

One of the first signs of being depressed is that you lose interest in things. That's why I think it is important to stay passionate.

Feel like real time unfolding. It's going to smack of reality and feel as real as it can ... The buildings themselves aren't (shown) ... The movie's about what happened amongst this handful of men when the buildings came down.

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.

I see myself as a student. I would never call myself a master or a maestro. If you take the path of the student, that means that you have to try a little bit of everything in the hopes that you're going to learn something or strike some kind of new note or new sound or new expression in the process. I'm not going for grades. I'm going for an education. That means I'm going to continue experimenting and trying new things to try to evolve and learn.

It may come as a surprise to people, but I'm actually quite boring and normal. What do I do? I read books. I drive my kid to school. I have lunch with my wife. I pick my kid up from school. I go home.

There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is, how do we arm the other 11?

I'm always curious about what happens when we die. And I'd like to think that somehow the spirit goes on. I'd rather not think that it's just about this.

The most meaningful movies I can make are the ones where parents can share them with their children and children can look forward to sharing them with their parents, a ritual if you will, where they get to spend time together and the kids are smiling.

I think I've become more relaxed throughout my career. I don't feel the need to jump up and down and make a big noise to get people to pay attention to me. I don't need to do punk rock gestures or eat a cockroach or do something weird to say I exist.

It's always exciting when you can go into a mode where you can be both spontaneous and choreographed. Sort of in control and out of control at the same time.

I'm the first to admit that I like going to, or my memories at least of going to Clint Eastwood movies or Charles Bronson or James Bond.

I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus - a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.

For me, acting was a way of taking destructive energy and doing something productive with it, and in that way it was quite a life saver.

When you start a movie, it's not like other kinds of work that you have when you know your boss for years or colleagues for years. You're meeting everyone, mostly, for the first time. You have to get comfortable with those people so you can perform, because the first thing that is going to shut you down is any kind of anxiety.

I'm one of those people that feels that Americans that shouldn't do Shakespeare ... The rhythms of the English language and the mannerisms of the English speech seems to work effortlessly with William Shakespeare, but when Americans do it, something seems stuck.

Actors work with their look. I come from the Lon Chaney Sr. school of acting. I'll wear wigs, I'll wear nose pieces, I'll wear green contact lenses in my eyes. I'll do whatever I need to do to create a character.

I always say, "Well if you think it's over the top, then tell me where the top is first. I don't think anyone can, but if you can tell me where the top is, then I'll tell you whether or not I'm over it."

I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.

I have eclectic tastes in the movies I want to do.

My father was always getting excited about something. It's genetically inside me somewhere.

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

I'm at the point now where I know I'm doing something right when a movie gets mixed reviews, because then I'm not in the box. I don't want to make it too easy for people and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I want to try something unusual.

One of my goals is to have a base near mainland China. I think Hong Kong would be a good match for me. I like being in Hong Kong.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.

I want to make all kinds of movies. I do want to make big movies that are a lot of fun to go to, but I also want to make movies that are going to stimulate some thought and maybe raise some awareness.

I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing.

When you have 400 people watching you making a movie, it doesn't go where you want it to go. It's a lot of pressure.

One of the pluses of getting older is you set some limits.

My mother was a dancer, so I like to use the body as part of the instrument of acting.

I needed to change my name just to liberate myself and find out I could do it without walking into a Hollywood casting office with the name Coppola.

I have dogs, and it's no secret that I find reptiles interesting, but the thing about reptiles is that they really just wanna be left alone, and I understand them. It's, 'Don't pick me up, stop holding me, don't look at me, just leave me alone.' I have to admit, sometimes I feel like that.

Hopefully as a result of 'The Frozen Ground,' more and more people will be aware of the horrible things that happen to ladies all over the world and give them respect. This movie is a love letter to those victims.

Idris Elba is a grand actor. He's very larger than life; he's bigger than life.

When I act, I hear it like music. In my head, I hear the dialogue like music.

Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh - that was genius - and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me.

I try not to be proud. I try to actively attack pride.

Without mentioning any names, I looked at pretty much every story that may come to your mind about a politician on the rise who was stopped short or dragged down by personal flaws and then became just a media storm. I see this as a thing that continues to happen in America and I wanted to say something about that.

It's a family that's loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even.

It's no secret that I've always had an interest in mythology. Whether it's Arthurian or ancient Greek or even Marvel universe. I've always connected with it on some level.

You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.

Peter Fonda is the reason I became a motorcyclist. I saw Easy Rider and I bought a motorcycle the next day, and I rode it all the way from LA to San Francisco.

Nobody ever thinks clearly at the airport.

I'm very impressed with 'Drive.'

I think I've spent more time in front of a camera than off camera. That's just the way it is.

You aren't a true internationalist until you've supplied weapons to kill your own countrymen.

I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'

Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still willing to go along for the ride.

I've always had an interest in Louisiana, especially New Orleans.

Those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.

I would say that I'm 98 percent skeptical, but the other 2 percent [is] open for the possibility of things.

I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.

I'm a seeker. I'm very much a believer in science. But I do think there are times when science and mysticism intersect.

My definition of a father is someone who empowers their children.

When I play supernatural characters in 'Ghost Rider' or 'City Of Angels,' the possibilities are limitless. The possibilities are endless, you can do so much with that.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

I may be alone in this, but I do sense the power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty powerful stuff when you consider that.

I try to make two movies a year. To me, that's not too much. On top of that, I like to work.

When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'

Disney has a great tradition of enchanting children and giving them something to behold.

I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.

How do you rebel in a family of rebels? That's the age-old question. I guess I could have by not going into the arts, but the thing is, I couldn't do anything else.

Film has lost something in the translation to high tech. It's become so super-real. It's with digital this and stereo that, and everything's like a CD.

I'm an enormous admirer of Christopher Lee. He's somebody, along with Vincent Price, who I celebrate, and I wanted my movies to show that celebration and that honoring of these great film stars that were unafraid to go into horror and Grand Guignol and the macabre.

I was very happy with Vampire's Kiss, which in my opinion was almost like an independent laboratory to start realizing some of my more expressionistic dreams with film performance. Then using what I had learned in Vampire's Kiss and putting it into a very big action movie in the form of Face/Off with John Woo. If you look at those two movies back to back, you can see where I stole from my performance in Vampire's Kiss.