Nicolas Cage Turned Down ‘Lord Of The Rings’ & ‘The Matrix’ For His Family

Nicolas Cage has won numerous awards, including the Academy Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, and the Golden Globe Award. Cage stated in February 2011 that he realized he had developed his own acting method, which he described as “Nouveau Shamanic,” at a certain point in his career. Nicolas recently spoke about his Hollywood priorities and why he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Nicolas Cage knows what’s important in life. The Oscar winner plays a fictionalized version of himself in his new comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he is always looking for the next role to put himself back on the map. As a result, he isn’t the best father to his 16-year-old daughter (played by Lily Sheen). However, Cage told People that in real life, he has always prioritized his family over his work.

“First and foremost … there’s no version of Nic Cage in reality that doesn’t want to spend time with his children. There’s no version of Nic Cage that didn’t put family first over career. I turned down Lord of the Rings and I turned down Matrix because I didn’t want to go to New Zealand for three years or Australia for three years because I needed to be home with my son Weston, that’s a fact.”

“So there is a huge disparity between that Nick Cage in Massive Talent and the Nic Cage sitting in front of you right now.”

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While the version of Cage depicted in Massive Talent may not be entirely accurate to the real Cage, the film does make fun of his illustrious filmography and the fervent fandom that surrounds him. Director Tom Gormican and co-screenwriter Kevin Etten were both taken aback when they discovered how the real Cage differs from the persona that came before him.

“The thing that surprised us most is he has this reputation of this sort of crazy, wild guy. Then he came and he was so unbelievably prepared and he had thought so much about the character. We were just fascinated by his process.”

“He understood that if he took something like this on he would get to really, on a huge scale, play with people’s ideas of who they think he is versus who he really is. It’s like a big performance art piece in that way.”

Cage explained that being able to make fun of himself is something he’s worked on for a long time.

“I always say to myself, ‘I never had a career, only work.’ What I mean by that is sometimes — and I won’t mention names — but when you get into this career-minded perception of one’s self it can be a slippery slope, and it can lead to things where you start believing in your own mythos and you start taking yourself way too seriously.”

“You become pretentious and then you fall into the realm of diva and that’s when mistakes happen in your personal life and on camera.”

Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, Ike Barinholtz, and Sharon Horgan star in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which opens in theatres on Friday. To get the latest updates, keep an eye on Thirsty.

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