Actor Nicolas Cage says that his latest role as a disturbed serial killer oddly hit close to home.
The Oscar winner revealed on Friday that he didn’t comb the darkest crevices of his mind to prepare for Longlegs, in which he plays a lethal occultist, but found the inspiration in his mother, who lived with schizophrenia and severe depression until her death in 2021.
“My mum put on Noxzema cold cream,” Nicolas told Entertainment Weekly. “I was two years old, and I opened the bathroom door [to see] what she was doing. For no reason, she turned her face really fast and stared at me after [putting on] the cold cream.”
“The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me,” he explained.
Longlegs, the fourth film from writer-director Oz Perkins, “centres on a series of old unsolved murders that resurface in the 1990s when FBI Agent Lee Harker is tasked to nab the elusive killer — whose white complexion is the stuff of nightmares”.
“He has a strange connection to the colour white,” Nicolas added to Entertainment Weekly about finding his character.
“I don’t really know what it is. He says it’s just a force he’s aware of. You don’t question it too much. He knows it when he sees it.”
Nicolas’ appearance has remained shrouded in mystery across marketing materials for the film. A recently-shared clip showing Harker first meeting Longlegs, meanwhile, included audio of his co-star Maika Monroe’s actual heart rate, which skyrocketed when she saw his face.
Nicolas previously told EW that his character is “a tragic entity … at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him”. His mother, Joy Vogelsang, reportedly struggled with similar issues for most of his youth — and even endured shock treatments during various institutionalisations.
“I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane?” he told EW in June. “It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through. She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry.”
The Leaving Las Vegas actor recently shared he’s “terrified” of becoming controlled through the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence, letting Hollywood inhabit his likeness with ease.
Horror fans, meanwhile, are rejoicing — as Longlegs sits at a ripe 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Longlegs is in cinemas now.