Caged Beast: Nicolas Cage is Now a Pussy Cat — No Sex, No Booze, Up at 2 For Exercise… and Bed By 7:30PM
Nicolas Cage is embracing clean living in Las Vegas.
July 16 2024, Published 3:05 p.m. ET
What happens in Vegas… is now pretty tame if you’re Nicolas Cage.
The Oscar-winning actor may live in Sin City, and while he continues to grace the silver screen in less-than-savory roles, he’s given up his bad-boy days in his personal life, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
'Say no to that whiskey on the rocks, say no to that strip club, say no to that casino. Just be completely dry with everything,' is Cage's new attitude to life.
The Moonstruck actor, 60, spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how he’s prepared for these roles, along with his new, spiritual approach to life with his wife Riko Shibata, and daughter, August.
Noting that he’s lived in Las Vegas for 14 years and “off and on for 17,” he explained it makes him “think about monks like Thomas Merton who’s in a Trappist monastery and he’s meditating all day, every day, and of course he’s writing brilliantly.
"But to me, if you really want to spiritually ascend, put yourself in the middle of Sin City and say ‘no.’ Say no to that whiskey on the rocks, say no to that strip club, say no to that casino. Just be completely dry with everything. I mean everything: intimacy, everything. See what that’s like."
He may live in Sin City, but Cage says he's "getting to a place of quietude and gentleness, like a haiku."
And it appears the Leaving Las Vegas star practices what he preaches. Cage claimed he starts “winding down,” at 7:30PM each night, “so I’m usually knocked out by 8.”
He also admitted to meditating in the shower, where he will “just go through some sort of little mantra, if you will, or some phraseology that I repeat to start my day.”
However, he drew the line at investing in a skincare routine, declaring: “I do absolutely nothing! I should because I live in the Mojave Desert, which is in fact the hottest desert in the world… We have temperatures out here sometimes at 132, 134 in Death Valley ... but I don’t have moisturizers or anything like that.”
And while he abstains from the whiskey, Cage has a caffeine addiction: “I do think I overdo it. I get two strawberry-flavored zero-sugar C4 energy drinks. Each has about 250 mg of caffeine.”
Still, clean-living Cage is not the man fans have become used to seeing on the silver screen. He’s taken on some decidedly bizarre roles in Vampire’s Kiss, Leaving Las Vegas, Birdy, and Ghostrider to name a few, and he’ll next appear as a serial killer in Longlegs.
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Speaking about Longlegs, Cage’s left-of-center persona is still very much intact, as he shared the biggest inspiration for his character, was his mother, because Osgood Perkins told Cage, his father created Norman Bates (Psycho) based on Perkins’ mother.
“I see this character in some ways as my mom, not that she was satanic, but she was touched with a very hard life and mental illness,” Cage said. “Growing up around that was equally fascinating and terrifying. So, her voice came back to me, the way she would talk to me, and I put all that into this character. It was cathartic.”
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As to his overall approach to roles, Cage revealed his philosophy changed over the years.
He said: “In the beginning, I was trying to make a big noise and be punk rock. With David Lynch, I was trying to do what Andy Warhol did by taking a giant icon—in this case, Elvis—and try to do that with film performance.”