He’s certainly an icon of the big screen, but apparently Nic Cage is thinking about moving on from movie acting. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the 59-year-old actor revealed he is starting to cement his exit plan, telling the outlet that he “may have three or four more movies left in [him].”
The nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, Cage has been a Hollywood stalwart since his 1982 debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High – since then he’s made more than 100 feature films, including six in 2023 alone!
But it appears Cage has been rethinking his future in Hollywood, preferring instead to focus on spending time with his family.
“I was taking stock of how much time I had left. I thought, okay, my dad died at 75, I’m going to be turning 60. If I’m lucky, I have maybe a good 15 years and hopefully more. What do I want to do with those 15 years, using my father as the model? It occurred very clearly to me that I want to spend time with my family,” he told the magazine.
He also told VF that he was considering crossing over to the world of television – a move he was inspired to take after watching Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. This would mark the first time that Cage, an established cinema actor, would appear in a TV show.
He explained: “I do feel I’ve said what I’ve had to say with cinema... I think I took film performance as far as I could... Maybe it’s time to look at the immersive streaming experience, I don’t know. I have to look for the next step and I haven’t found it yet.”
Cage has been candid before about taking on roles to escape $6 million of debt, but insists that he’s never “phoned it in”, and that he was passionate about every offer he accepted.
Nevertheless, Cage has recently focused on moving away from what he calls the “meme-ification” era of his career, and has started to make films with a more “personal performance style”, as he calls it (see: Dream Scenario, Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent).
“I do want to get much more severe and stringent in my selection process,” he said, considering what his final few films will be.
“But I want to look ahead. I want to see what’s next.”