Quotes By Nicolas Cage

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

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.

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.

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 mean, I've acted professionally since I was 16.

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.

Having been a father for 19 years I realise fatherhood has changed me.

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.

Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig.

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.

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

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.

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.

The biggest problem for me was feeling that as I became more balanced and a better man that I wouldn't have the fire to create from.

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.

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

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 would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful.

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 came out of independent film, that's my roots.

How do you rebel in a family of rebels?

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

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

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 like to move and get physical in my movies.

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.

To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new.

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