When people tell Nicolas Cage that he has appeared in their dreams, he gets a little jumpy. “I’m like: ‘Well, I hope I behaved,’” he says in his unmistakably emphatic drawl. “You wanna make sure you didn’t do something horrific.” Dreams are on his mind today because of his new film, the Ari Aster-produced black comedy Dream Scenario, which he has phoned from Perth, Australia, to discuss. It is early evening there, and the 59-year-old actor is in a rented beach-front house with his fifth wife, Riko Shibata, and their one-year-old daughter, August, named after Cage’s late father. “It’s lovely,” he sighs contentedly as August wails in the background. “I have a nice view of the waves and I’m enjoying watching the outstanding surfers here. It’s really a dance. A ballet.”
He is in the middle of shooting a movie – called, appropriately enough, The Surfer – though it would be a shock if he wasn’t. Impersonating Cage on Saturday Night Live, Andy Samberg said: “My dream as an actor is to appear in every film ever released. However, until now I’ve only been able to muster a measly 90%, bringing shame upon my dojo.” At one point during our conversation, Cage claims not to know how many films he has made. I count 109 completed features, though the ones in which he plays dual roles, such as Adaptation and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, should probably be counted twice. For Unbearable Weight, where he played two Nicolas Cages, he even snogged himself. “I wanted it to be kind of cubist,” he says.
