Nicolas Cage: “Even when I make four films a year to pay off my debts, I’ve done my best” | showbiz

On GQ, Nicolas Cage tells that for a while he made as many films as possible to pay off his debts. He compares it to a “conveyor belt”. By comparison, during the time Cage was making 46 movies, Brad Pitt made 19 and Tom Cruise 11. From blockbuster movies, he’s turned straight to video. He explains, “The phone stopped ringing. Then I said, ‘What do you mean we won’t make ‘National Treasure 3’?” It’s been 14 years. Why not? An obvious answer came. No, but it was clear that they saw Cage as the problem: “Well, Sorcerer’s Apprentice didn’t work, and Ghost Rider wasn’t selling tickets. And ‘Drive Angry’ just passed.

So Cage had to find another way to pay creditors. “There are the creditors and the IRS and on top of that I spend $20,000 a month to get my mother out of a mental institution. And I couldn’t. It just happened once.” Although he wants to make two things clear: that he has never filed for bankruptcy and that he is always making an effort. “When I was making four films a year – one by one – I still found something in them that allowed me to give my all. Not all of them worked. Some were brilliant, like ‘Mandy’, others simply didn’t. But I never did half the work.” So, if there is a misconception, it is this: I just did it and I didn’t care. I did.”

He finally managed to pay off all his debts about a year and a half ago.