Quotes By Nicolas Cage

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

I like fantasy. I like horror, science fiction because I can get avant-garde with those performances in those movies.

I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs.

I do enjoy animated movies.

I hit the ground running, without a lot of training, so I had to do whatever I could do to survive as a professional, and if that meant being that character 24/7 and acting out, I was going to do that. I lived those characters, I brought them home with me.

I think I jump around more when I'm alone.

I wanted to make an image for myself as an outlaw type. A kind of rock 'n' roll sensibility.

And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy.

I try to do as many stunts as they'll let me do. I think it's important for an audience to feel that the actor's really doing it.

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

I don't want to just do independent movies and I don't want to just do adventure films. I enjoy both, and I think both are cogent.

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.

I'm sad about this, but we shouldn't have been married in the first place.

As I got older, with my work, I became aware of the responsibility of film, and I feel one of the best ways I can apply myself as an actor, is to go beyond movie stardom and celebrity.

Actors have an opportunity to use storytelling as a way to solve pain.

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.

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

If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.

All of my characters have a glint of madness.

Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.

It's amazing marrying someone who wants nothing to do with Hollywood.

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.

At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.

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

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.

How do you rebel in a family of rebels?

There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.

Passion is very important to me. If you stop enjoying things, you've got to look at it, because it can lead to all kinds of depressing scenarios.

As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious.

I do like to move and get physical in my movies.