Fans are currently losing it over images of Nicolas Cage in full costume as Dracula, obsessing over his red velvet suit, slicked-back hair, white makeup, purple lips and long fingernails.
Cage is playing Bram Stoker’s iconic monster in upcoming movie Renfield, which takes its name from Dracula’s henchman who will be played by Nicholas Hoult.
The actor has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. His turn as a vengeful truffle hunter in 2021’s Pig saw him lauded by fans and critics alike, receiving a host of indie film awards.
People can’t get enough of the actor for his bizarre behaviour, fashion statements and offbeat roles. His latest might just be his strangest, as he stars as himself in the upcoming The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Cage has appeared in more than 100 films, clarifying recently that he starred in a large number of straight-to-VOD projects because he was in debt and “spending $20,000 a month trying to keep my mother out of a mental institution”.
Nevertheless, Cage has never once “phoned it in”, as he said, always giving his entire self to his performances and often drastically changing the way he looks in order to pull it off.
Here are nine incredible times that Cage has reinvented his appearance, ranked below in chronological order.
Birdy (1984)
For the 1984 Vietnam War drama Birdy, Cage got into tremendous shape, pulled out his own milk teeth with no anaesthetic and keeping his head wrapped in bandages for five weeks straight, even sleeping in them. When the bandages were removed, his face was covered in acne and ingrown hairs. “The reactions on the street were brutal,” Cage told The Telegraph in 1985. “Men and women laughing, kids staring.”
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Renfield is not the first time Cage has donned the fangs. In this outlandish Eighties comedy horror, Cage plays a literary agent who falls in love with a vampire. Aside from the joke shop quality fangs, Cage went all out for the role, even eating live cockroaches – the film’s co-producer Barry Shils lied to an animal rights group, saying the insects survived.
Adaptation (2002)
Cage’s hair looked unrecognisable in Adaptation, for which he also wore a fat suit. The actor played screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald for this movie with an A-list cast comprised of Meryl Streep, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Ghost Rider (2007)
Cage got shredded for his first outing as Johnny Blaze AKA Ghost Rider to the extent that people questioned whether a topless scene was CGI. Cage, who was 42 at the time of shooting, said his punishing gym routine was “awful” in an interview with IndieLondonAd (via Comic Book Resources). He explained: “Every break I was in the gym maybe four or five hours a day on shooting days and then all day on the weekends. The day I shot the mirror scene I’d had nothing to eat and I started to have candy corn sugar, which makes you more vascular, so I was going a little crazy.”
Season of the Witch (2011)
Cage took on the classic medieval long hair look for this fantasy movie that was loathed by critics, receiving a score of 11 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. Cage starred alongside Ron Perlman as Teutonic Knights who return from The Crusades to find their people decimated by plague. He must take a witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery to lift the curse.
Dying of the Light (2014)
Cage went grey for this Paul Schrader thriller in which the actor plays a terminally ill CIA agent. Cage had said in an interview at the time that he was “in the process of reinventing” himself. “I am returning to my roots, which is independently spirited, dramatic characters,” he told Flickeringmyth.com.
Outcast (2014)
Cage had his longest hair ever for this American-Chinese-Canadian action film, the less said about which, the better. There are undoubtedly a lot of extensions in Cage’s hair, but the actor really grew a long ponytail for the movie as evidenced by paparazzi photos at the time.
“The status of actor Nicolas Cage’s career has now definitively shifted from its entertainingly eccentric phase into its genuinely befuddling and perhaps sad phase,” critic Glenn Kenny wrote of the film.
Arsenal (2017)
Cage shows off a cartoonish Seventies style in this straight-to-video thriller in which he reprises his role as Mississippi crime boss Eddie from 1993’s Deadfall. Cage’s putty nose, slug moustache and black mop wig are probably the best things about this film.
Pig (2021)
Cage found critical acclaim playing a truffle hunter living alone in the Oregonian wilderness with his truffle-hunting pig. In Pig, Cage is grizzled, overweight and dirty. His appearance is the perfect prop for his performance. As Clarisse Loughrey wrote in her review for The Independent: “Cage’s Rob may be half-hidden behind his mountain-man beard, straggly hair, clotted blood... and dishevelled clothes, but it only brings greater attention to how lost and soulful those crystal-blue eyes can look.”
