Internet Meme's

Nicolas Cage expresses 'frustration' with Cage rage internet meme

Actor says his over-the-top acting style is ‘all very thought out and carefully planned’

Andrew Pulver

 ‘A poetic work of art’ … Nicolas Cage in Mandy. Photograph: Allstar/Xyz Films

Nicolas Cage has expressed his frustration with “Cage rage” internet memes, saying they are “frustrating” and unfair to him and the directors of his films.


In an interview with Indiewire to promote his latest film Mandy, a gory action-horror in which Cage plays a revenger looking to take down a satanic biker gang, Cage said: “I’m sure it’s frustrating for [director] Panos [Cosmatos], who has made what I consider a very lyrical, internal, and poetic work of art, to have this ‘Cage rage’ thing slammed all over his movie … the internet has kind of done the movie a disservice.”

Cage rage is the name given to images and compilations of the actor’s over-the-top, grimacing, eye-bulging performances – for which he has become notorious.


 Nicolas Cage in the original scene of the You Don’t Say meme, from the movie Vampire’s Kiss (1988). Photograph: PR

Cage went on to elaborate the thinking behind his theatrical acting style, saying he aimed to realise his “abstract and more ontological fantasies with film performance, by playing people who were crazy, or by playing people who were on drugs, or supernaturally possessed”. He added: “It’s all very thought out and carefully planned.”

Cage also said he was aware of fellow actor Ethan Hawke’s admiring comments in a Reddit Ask Me Anything webchat, in which Hawke said Cage was “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting; he’s successfully taken us away from an obsession with naturalism into a kind of presentation style of acting that I imagine was popular with the old troubadours”. Cage responded: “That made me feel good … The list goes on and on about these old troubadours who embraced a kind of charismatic and larger-than-size stylisation. A grandeur, if you will.”