I do love romantic movies, but at my age it doesn’t happen very often. I’ve always admired love stories—the expression of love is like white light to… - Nicolas Cage

My interest has always been cinema or films, because that’s what I was most compelled by. I was most inspired by the movie actors that I grew up with. I only hesitate to say I would because my process now is that I need about two months for the libretto of the screenplay to sink into my instruments so that I can not have to think about dialogue. That’s the first thing that’s going cave an actor in, having anxiety about not knowing their lines. I don’t want that.

I can’t go into specifics or percentages or ratios, but yeah, money is a factor. I’m going to be completely direct about that. There’s no reason not to be. There are times when it’s more of a factor than not. I still have to feel that, whether or not the movie around me entirely works, I’ll be able to deliver something and be fun to watch. But yes, it’s no secret that mistakes have been made in my past that I’ve had to try to correct. Financial mistakes happened with the real estate implosion that occurred, in which the lion’s share of everything I had earned was pretty much eradicated. But one thing I wasn’t going to do was file for bankruptcy. I had this pride thing where I wanted to work my way through anything, which was both good and bad.

As a film actor, my job is to facilitate the director’s vision. If there’s something I’m doing that they don’t agree with, I drop it.