Nicolas Cage defends all of those direct-to-video roles

In Tom Gormican’s The unbearable weight of talentAnd the Nicolas Cage He plays a meta version of himself who agrees to attend a billionaire’s birthday party in order to catch up on his finances. One thing he has in common with an exaggerated version of himself is taking on jobs he wouldn’t normally think of in order to get himself out of debt.

Starting in 2014, Dion Cage was heavy advertiser The actor also teetered on bankruptcy. He blasted his $150 million into real estate, and owed $6.3 million in property taxes.

Cage says in a profile with GQ. “It was all happening at once.”

In the interview, Cage opens up about overcoming his debts, and his time picking up roles in direct-to-video films. He’s always been a fairly busy actor, taking on multiple roles per year on average since starting his career in 1981. What changed is when they switched from blockbuster movies to a mountain of video-on-demand productions. Cage has starred in 46 films in a time frame where the most successful actors have completed around 10 films. However, the actor defends his decision to choose all these films.

“When I was shooting four movies a year, back-to-back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give my all,” says Cage. They didn’t work, all of them. Some of them were great, like mandy, but some of them didn’t work. But I never called him. So if there is a misconception, it is. I was just doing that and I don’t care. I cared.”

However, Cage also recognizes that taking those less glamorous, straight-to-video roles – even though they made him in debt – certainly affected the kind of shows that were on the table. “The phone stopped ringing.

It was like, ‘What do you mean we don’t?’ National Treasure 3? It’s been 14 years. Why not? He remembers the question, Before adding the reply that was not said by itself“we will, apprentice magician did not work and Ghost rider The tickets didn’t really sell out. And the drive angrilythat just came and went.”

The actor reveals that he officially finished paying his debts a year and a half ago, which is when he started doing more respectable shows, like the indie thriller. pig.

After getting out of debt and back on the right track in his career, Cage enters a new era where he can choose the roles to take, such as his decision to play Dracula. “I’m just going to focus on being very selective, as much as I can be,” he says. “I would like to make every movie as if it were my last.”