Nicolas Cage was on hand for the TIFF premiere of his latest film, “Dream Scenario”, in which he plays Paul Matthews, an ordinary guy who becomes a reluctant celebrity when he mysteriously begins appearing in the dreams of other.
ET Canada’s Jed Tavernier spoke with Cage on the red carpet ahead of the film’s world premiere on Saturday night and asked about his portrayal.
“I actually had gone through an experience that was not unlike Paul’s experience.”
“Well, you said on the record that this was one of the furthest roles away from yourself that you’ve played in a while,” Tavernier noted.
“Well, see, that’s interesting if I said that, because I actually had gone through an experience that was not unlike Paul’s experience,” he explained.
“Someone had made a video, cherry-picking scenes from different movies where I had meltdowns, and it was called ‘Nicolas Cage losing his sh**t.’ And it went viral around the world overnight and it was like, I was the first actor, I think, it happened to.”
“I couldn’t stop it. It kept growing exponentially and I was like, ‘How should I feel about this?’”
Admitting he found the whole thing to be “confusing” and “irritating, Cage added, “I couldn’t stop it. It kept growing exponentially from pounding on its and magnifications went on and I was like, well, ‘How should I feel about this?’ And all those feelings I just put into Paul Matthews’ experience where people just wake up inexplicably having dreamt about him around the world.”
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Cage also shared some other inspirations behind his performance.
“And this is a man that isn’t a movie star or a rock star,” Cage said. “So this is a man who’s a quiet professor in a small college who just wants to write a book about behavioural science. And so I felt like the movie had a lot of heart because of that. My father was a professor, an academic. And so those memories of him and the pressures he felt at the university, I just applied all that to this.”
“So, yes, he’s nothing like me in terms of his appearance, in terms of the way he moves and in terms of his interests. But I could make it so that it was no acting, where I felt like I could channel those personal experiences,” he concluded.
“Dream Scenario” hits theatres Nov. 10.
