Top 279 Quotes & Sayings by Nicolas Cage - Page 5

I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.

Generally my instinct is to not do biographical movies. I want to build characters and not be locked into playing a part in history.

I think a good movie is a good movie whether that falls into a genre or not.

People often say that you should never work with child actors. I think that's all wrong. Children have not had the imagination kicked out of them by life experience and adulthood. So, they still are very much alive with that kind of magical thinking which enables an actor to believe they're in these circumstances and make them real to you.

More than ever, movies reveal themselves as healing, as helpful, as encouraging, as escapist - anything that makes someone get through their day in these times. It's the best form of entertainment, and it's still arguably the most inexpensive form of entertainment.

I just try to keep it fresh. I try to keep it interesting. The truth is my roots are independently spirited dramas that are small, and I will always go back to that well, because that's where I broke out of. But I'm going to keep doing as many different movies as I possibly can.

I came out of independent film, that's my roots. I used my independent film as a laboratory, and used what I could discover in that laboratory.

I always wanted to find a way to apply my acting in a big mad monster movie where I was transforming into this scary entity.

I really think it's important that my beliefs don't impinge upon what you get from the movie. It's your opinion that matters and it's far more interesting than mine.

I don't know why it is, but I do like dancing in the extreme situations. I like that noise, I like that intensity. For some reason, it's what I respond to in terms of my taste and of my instincts.

These so called Popcorn movies, or family movies, actually provide something quite beautiful and something quite necessary, which is a family bonding experience.

I was very happy with Vampire's Kiss, which in my opinion was almost like an independent laboratory to start realizing some of my more expressionistic dreams with film performance. Then using what I had learned in Vampire's Kiss and putting it into a very big action movie in the form of Face/Off with John Woo. If you look at those two movies back to back, you can see where I stole from my performance in Vampire's Kiss.

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I’m 51 going on 52, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance.

In the beginning my energy and passion for acting came from an almost punk rock need to express a lot of anger wherever that may have come from. As I got older, it became or is coming more from a place of wanting to use the craft to help others in some way, to hold a mirror up to the situations that we're going through, to actually be more cautious about the way that I use the power of film and to see if there's anything that I can do in the performances that will resonate in the public a similar string that's on people's minds and is on my mind. That way we have that relationship.

When I started experimenting with fantasy and horror films and looking for characters who had some sort of emotional or mental difficulty, I saw opportunities to express my music - dare I say art - in a way that I could get a bit surreal.

I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.

I got a little tired of movies where I had to shoot people. I got to thinking about the power of film and what that power is. The power is in fact that it really can change people's minds.

When you're playing supernatural characters, there's an infinite number of possibilities with a character. And I also think they're wonderful and entertaining for the whole family. You don't have a high body count.

I went to New Orleans for the first time for Wild at Heart, and I kept going back to make more movies there. I've become very close to the city and part of me does feel like a New Orleanian.

I want to try to apply my abilities sometimes to make families happy, so I have to make movies at a venue that are not gratuitously violent, that are not using bullets and bloodshed, but are using things like magic and fantasy and enchantment and the imagination. To me that's just all positive stuff. But I am eclectic and I still like to make movies for the midnight audience as well.

I had been making a lot of family oriented movies, which I also like. But I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

When you're playing a spirit from another dimension, you really can do anything and get as abstract as you want and still have a context that will work within the movie. I wanted Ghost Rider to move in a way where it would be like a bad dream. I thought about cobra snakes, and the way that they will show you their backs and sway in a rhythmic motion and almost lull you to sleep before suddenly attacking. Well, I put that into the movie. And I decided to move my head in the jerky way a praying mantis does. So, I did all these things to give the movie a feeling of otherness.

You often feel like you are on a high wire with no net productions because you have to rely on spontaneity and come up with ideas on the spur of the moment - and then what happens is that there is electricity to it that gets caught.

I just want to keep making movies that hopefully makes some kids smile.

I love working with younger actors because they always come into the game full of energy and ideas that challenge me and keep me learning and stimulated.

I certainly would never overstep my bounds and make suggestions to a director. As an actor I'm trying to fit to the best of my abilities within the director's vision, and trying to find some happy rapport where we can both bring something to it that's fresh. Usually I've been lucky in working with directors who have trusted my instincts.

I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?

Without impending on your own personal choice, there are going to be those that wear the hat of religion and those that wear the hat of science. I still don't really understand why they can't wear both hats, because personally, I think that they go beautifully together.

I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called "Adaptation" where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball and a gas stand.

All movies on some level can aspire to be more than just whatever the label is of the movie.

Sometimes I do love to rehearse, but I always switch it up depending on whom I'm working with.

When I work, I really try to get absorbed in the character. Unless I want to do something playful with the camera, I'm not too worried about where the camera is or positions.

God bless the popcorn film. Especially movies where you can take the kids, because I remember looking forward to seeing these movies with my parents, and if I can give that back, I'm gonna do it.

I don't find the same things funny that many other people seem to find funny. I don't really respond to sex jokes and things like that, and some of my friends look at me and go, "Come on, Nic, that was my best joke. Why aren't you laughing?" I go, "I really don't know why I'm not laughing. I'm sort of out of sync with it." So I'd have to find something that was really about weird human behavior for me to laugh.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

I like the idea of being involved in pictures that can entertain the entire family and can stimulate youngsters into looking at picture books. There's nothing wrong with that.

I've always believed that the greatest actors are the ones that have the voices that are imitable.

I find children inspiring. The way they look at the world. The magical world they live in, to me, is inspiring.