Break free from the naturalism, so to speak, and express a larger way of performance.” “In movies like Prisoners of the Ghost Land or even Face/Off or Vampire’s Kiss,” he continues, “I was experimenting with what I would like to call Western Kabuki or more Baroque or operatic style of film performance. So I tried with Wild Heart a Warhol-like approach to the Sailor Ripley character.” Being a bit of a rebel, I wanted to break that rule.

“Stanislavski said the worst thing an actor can do is imitate. “I was also a big believer in arts synchronicity,” he adds, going on to propose an approach to film performance that takes inspiration from painting: “You can get abstract, you can get photorealistic, you can get impressionistic.”

“It was my aunt Talia Shire who first said to me, ‘Naturalism is a style,’” he says, reflecting on his signature acting methods. Speaking in an interview for Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, the thespian - he prefers the word “thespian” apparently, at risk of “sounding like a pretentious asshole” - looks back over his career and inspirations, running all the way up to his most recent film, the relatively understated Pig. And, if you thought that his acting was over-the-top in any of the above, he has something to say about that, too.

Nicolas Cage has offered new insight into some of his most eccentric and unorthodox acting roles, from David Lynch’s deranged road movie Wild at Heart, to 1997’s Face/Off, to Sion Sono’s 2021 sci-fi comedy Prisoners of the Ghostland.

David lynch nicolas cage wild at heart