Interesting little piece about Nic, fun to read...also Nic as Dracula, yes I say!!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10155965/The-wonderfully-mad-world-of-Nicolas-Cage.html

The wonderfully mad world of Nicolas Cage

Famed as much for his eccentricity as his movie roles, Anne Billson takes a look at some of Nicolas Cage's more bizarre moments.

 

There was the Elvis phase that persisted through Wild at Heart, Honeymoon in Vegas, and marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the singer's daughter. He was relatively low-key in the 1993 neo-noir Red Rock West but made up for it in his brother Christopher's conman caper Deadfall with a poppers-snorting performance so manic it set the benchmark by which all subsequent Cage performances have had to be judged. Vern, my favourite online critic, dubbed it "mega-acting".

In the space of one year (1995), Cage was not just winning an Oscar for his performance as an alcoholic screenwriter drinking himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas, but also scuppering David Caruso's stab at big-screen stardom. Who remembers Caruso's bland hero in Kiss of Death (1995) when Cage was playing a sociopath who bench-presses strippers and has a phobia about metal cutlery?

Since then it has been mega-acting a-go-go, often incorporating silly accents (cod-Italian in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, fake-English in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets) and demented hair. "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," he told screenjunkies.com. Cast opposite a comparable ham - John Malkovich in Con Air, John Travolta in Face/Off - he seems almost moderate, but his presence on the side of the good guys is a useful guarantee that evil won't be hogging the spotlight, not while he's there to deliver lines like, "Put the bunny back in the box!" Spike Jonze's Adaptation went for broke by casting him opposite himself in the dual roles of twin brothers apparently vying with the other for the saddest hair in screen history.

At certain points over the past decade Cage has owned 15 personal residences (including castles in Germany and England), nine Rolls-Royces and the skull of a Tarbosaurus; these spending sprees and some not entirely unconnected tax problems and lawsuits have required him to step up his output. If you ever get the feeling he's in every other film you see, welcome to the club - and maybe take a look at the rather disturbing blog Nic Cage As Everyone.

Some say he's not choosy enough about his films, but it's a miracle the quality of his performances has remained as high as it is. His acting in recent generic thrillers like Trespass or Seeking Justice may, unsurprisingly, seem tired, but the tiredness can play nicely into the character, adding unexpectedly subtle shadings to the obsessive avenger in Kick-Ass, or the centuries-old magus in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Now, I reckon, would be the perfect time for him to play Dracula.

Cage's mega-acting can be a marvellous thing to behold: the bug-eyes, the yelling, the Mick Jagger poses, the Oscar-winning lugubriousness. Sometimes the results are hilarious, as in the "Not the bees! Not the bees! AAAAAAGGGGHHH!" of Neil LaBute's ill-advised remake of The Wicker Man. But The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (another, more successful remake) was directed by Werner Herzog, who has past form with over-the-top actors - he made five films with Klaus Kinski - and Cage's performance as the corrupt, crackheaded yet oddly sympathetic Detective Terence McDonagh shows he still has surprises up his sleeve. In the words of McDonagh, "Shoot him again - his soul's still dancing."