Nicolas Cage has an Oscar and well over 100 film credits to his name, but there are a few high-profile directors the acting legend doubts he will ever work with.
And it is all because he once told them “no”.
Cage, 62, said a group of fellow Oscar winners, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, will not “call [him] back” after he turned down roles in their films, even if it was decades ago.
He shared examples while explaining why he was impressed Silver Linings Playbook director David O. Russell offered him a second chance to work together.
Cage leads Russell’s upcoming American football biopic Madden, which is expected to be released in November.
Asked about how that role came to be, as Cage had no idea who famed football coach John Madden was, he said it was all about being given another chance by a director.
“David O. Russell offered me a movie a million years ago,” Cage told The New York Times.
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“It was a good movie, and he offered it and I said no, and he’s the only director that I ever said no to who actually came back and offered me another movie.
“Most of them, they get their feelings hurt and don’t call you back. It’s happened a million times to me.
“It’s happened with Christopher Nolan, it’s happened with Woody Allen, it’s happened with Paul Thomas Anderson.
“They don’t call me back.”
He said he turned down a role in Nolan’s 2002 movie, Insomnia, and “a very early movie” with Anderson.
“Anyway, David did call me, and it showed a lot of class that he would call me back and invite me again, and I didn’t want to say no to him again because I have great respect for his talent,” Cage said.
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Meanwhile, Cage’s latest role is one very different to the award-favourite directors’ films – he plays an older, down-on-his-luck version of Spider-Man in the Prime Video series Spider-Noir, premiering May 27.
