It’s been a joke for a while now about just how wild Nicolas Cage can be when acting in films. Unlike actors who turn in objectively bad performances, none of what Cage does can be deemed “bad.” Often unique, and sometimes borderline crazed, Cage goes for broke with nearly every role put in front of him. And perhaps the most legendary example of this is in the classic John Woo action film, “Face/Off.” It’s a film that even Cage looks back on and calls “trippy.”
Speaking to Variety, Nicolas Cage talked about his iconic performance as Caster Troy (and also Sean Archer pretending he’s Caster Troy) in the 1997 film, “Face/Off.” For those unfamiliar, “Face/Off” tells the story of a special agent, Sean Archer (John Travolta) who goes undercover as a bad guy, Caster Troy (Cage), by literally replacing his face with that of Troy’s. It’s a bonkers concept brought to life beautifully by two actors at the top of their bonkers game. It’s so strange that even Cage is astounded that it actually worked.
“That movie was an interesting example of independent attitude and big-studio filmmaking,” Cage says. “The fact that it worked, that it landed, and the public loved it, I was like, ‘Okay, see, this is why we gotta make both. We can’t give up on the independent movie.'”
And there is one scene in the film, where Sean Archer (wearing Caster Troy’s face) yells at a group of inmates in a futuristic penitentiary that he’s Caster Troy. It’s one of the most famous scenes in the film because you get to see Cage turn it up to 11 in a truly awe-inspiring way. For Cage, he recounts just how powerful his acting was in that moment because he believes that he shed his corporeal form and left his body while filming that scene.
“That was the scene in the jail cell where — god, it’s such a trippy movie — where Sean Archer is pretending he’s Castor Troy and so it was so … cubist,” explained Cage. “And I remember I was like, ‘I’m Castor Troy!’ And it went on and on, almost like a riot.”
He added, “There was a moment in there where I think I actually left my body. I got scared, am I acting or is this real? I can see it if I look at the movie, that one moment, it’s in my eyes.”
Perhaps the best part of Nicolas Cage, and a thing that is often overlooked by people who just like to poke fun at his performances, is how thoughtful and smart the man is. He isn’t some sort of terrible artist who gets put in awful films for shits and giggles. Listening to Cage talk about his choices for each film and why he does what he does is downright revelatory. So, yeah, he does wild shit on screen. But it’s all calculated. And THAT is what sets him apart from the pack and makes him Cage.
You can watch the “I’m Caster Troy!” scene below: