Nicolas Cage has said he plans to retire from acting in films and has “maybe three or four more movies” left to do before he switches his attention to TV.
In an interview with Uproxx, Cage said: “I feel that I’ve, at this point – after 45 years of doing this; that in over 100 movies – I feel I’ve pretty much said what I’ve had to say with cinema. And I’d like to leave on a high note and say, ‘Adios’.”
He added: “I think I have to do maybe three or four more movies before I can get there, and then hopefully switch formats and go into some other way of expressing my acting.”
Cage suggested that he would have liked Dream Scenario, the well-reviewed fantasy comedy in which he plays an academic who begins appearing in others’ dreams, to have been his final film, but that he has “other contracts that [he has] to fulfil”.
However, Cage suggested he was now “very interested in immersion streaming with episodic television” and was particularly impressed with the acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad. Cage said: “I have seen things that can be done now with characters and the time they’re given to express themselves. I saw Bryan Cranston stare at a suitcase for an hour on one episode of Breaking Bad. We don’t have time to do that in a feature film, so maybe television is the next best step for me.”
Cage, who has been acting in films since the early 1980s, with his first big-screen credit (as Nicolas Coppola, his real name) in the teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, also suggested that personal factors were playing a part in his thinking. “I want to spend some quality time with my family … What’s important is my children and I have a baby daughter. And if I can find an episodic show to do that stays in one place where I don’t have to keep leaving, we can all be together. That, on a personal level, would be great.”
