Every Wonderful Thing Nicolas Cage Said During His Reddit AMA

Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage recently sat down for a Reddit AMA to help promote his wacky new movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which opens in theaters on April 22.

As you'd expect, the AMA was a goldmine of revelations and other fascinating anecdotes.

Among other things, Cage revealed his dream role, which directors he'd like to work with, his favorite pasta shape, and so much more. The entire Reddit AMA is well worth a look, but you can click through the gallery here to see the highlights.

As for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage plays a version of himself in the wacky and wonderful-sounding film that also stars Pedro Pascal, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tiffany Haddish.

Cage's dream role might not be what you'd expect, and it may never happen. "I would like to play Jules Verne's Captain Nemo because of the character's love of the ocean I share that with him," Cage said.

The Leaving Las Vegas actor also revealed the movies he can watch again and again without growing tired of them, and they include Apocalypse Now (directed by his family member Francis Ford Coppola) and Studio Ghibli's acclaimed animated movie Spirited Away.

Also in the AMA, Cage said he would be up to make Face/Off 2, a sequel to the 1997 film in which he literally trades faces with John Travolta's character. Asked how his life changed since he swapped faces with Travolta, Cage replied, "Hahahaha."

As it happens, Face/Off 2 is a real movie that is in the works.

In another illuminating response, Cage revealed the three movies he's made that he would preserve for posterity if he could. These include Leaving Las Vegas--for which he earned an Academy Award--as well as the 1999 psychological drama Bringing Out the Dead from director Martin Scorsese. The third would be his most recent movie, Pig, in which Cage plays a man in the wilderness on a journey to find his pig.

Cage listed off a few directors that he'd love to work with someday, and they include some very big names.

"I would love to work with Christopher Nolan. I would love to work with Ari Aster, I would love to work with Robert Egger. Spike Lee too," he said.

In perhaps Cage's most important revelation, the actor revealed his favorite pasta shape and shared a fun story behind it.

"I once went to an Italian restaurant in San Francisco about 25 years ago with Charlie Sheen because they had square tube pasta and he was very interested in trying square tube pasta and we did and we loved it so much we went back the next day to try it again," he said.

Cage starred in the 2021 movie Pig from director Michael Sarnoski, and the actor was praised for his performance. He said he wanted to make the movie because it represented a return to a "more quiet, naturalistic style of performance" compared to what he'd done recently.

"I was interested in returning to a more quiet, naturalistic style of film performance, having done a series of more operatic performance styles. The movie feels rather like a folk song to me or a poem, and the character of Rob was contending with tremendous grief and self imposed isolation and I think we as a group of people experiencing a pandemic in 2020-21 we’re probably also having similar feelings of loss and isolation and it communicated to a nerve we were all experiencing. It's one of my favorite movies, and it's probably my best work," he said.

In one of his final responses in the Reddit AMA, Cage said it was a "highwire act" to play a version of himself, Nick Cage, in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

"I would say that Nick Cage in Massive Talent was the most challenging role I had to get into character for because I had the added component of trying to protect a person named Nick Cage and also facilitating the director’s absurdist vision of so-called Nick Cage and it was a highwire act everyday," he said.

In the AMA, Cage elaborated a little further on his thoughts about the movie Pig, saying it was his a career highlight. As for his best movie ever? That's probably Bringing Out The Dead, he said.

"Pig is my favorite performance of mine, and I think that movie, along with Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead are arguably my two best movies as a whole," he said.