With 100-plus acting credits, Nicolas Cage is only now starring in his first Western.
“It’s purely happenstance. I had been scratching my head for many years wondering why this hadn’t happened sooner,” Cage, 59, said in a Zoom interview about the newly released film, “The Old Way.”
“I mean, I grew up in California. I think I wear a cowboy hat well. So I don’t know why it took this long. I grew up watching movies like ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ and I enjoyed specifically Charles Bronson’s performance as Harmonica in that movie.”
As Colton Briggs in “The Old Way,” a cold-blooded gunslinger changed by a wife and daughter, Bronson’s laconic character “was always on my mind. The challenge here was, How can I get close to that feeling of minimalism where you can convey so much and do so little?”
What’s unique is that both Colton and his 9-year-old daughter Brooke have, Cage pointed out, “A condition which is never explained. In this condition, they have no feeling for love, or even to react in a normal way in society to a joke. They almost have to ‘act’ like they’re laughing, ‘act’ like they’re crying or ‘act’ like they’re feeling anything at all. On top of that, they both have a propensity for violence.
“It’s through this tragedy that happens on this road trip between father and daughter that they finally learn to love. And that,” he emphasized, “was a bit of a balancing act. You don’t want to feel like you’re portraying a robot. At the same time, you want to feel like you’re within the confines of the character’s condition but still have some emotions and nuance.”
Cage famously grew up part of an artistic family – his birth name is Nicholas Coppola, and “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle. He always knew he wanted to act. But did he ever wonder: Do I do this the rest of my life?
“I think I’m doing exactly what I was meant to be doing. And I feel blessed that I found it at such an early age. But there were times I thought, This isn’t going to happen. I didn’t give up but I did feel like there were many times when it was getting close to ‘I’m going to try and find a fishing boat or join the Merchant Marines because I don’t think this is going to work out.’
“There are only so many times actors can take rejection before it starts caving you in, where you don’t feel you’re going to make it.” But he did – and spectacularly.
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(“The Old Way” is now in theaters and streams on Friday.)
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