Nicolas Cage Addresses if He’ll Ever Retire

Nicolas Cage has become a unique part of the Hollywood ecosystem, with the beloved actor appearing in everything from action thrillers to supernatural horror to gripping dramas. Many would argue that Cage brings a one-of-a-kind flavor to every project he takes, which has made the idea of him having additional films in the pipeline intriguing. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly about his work on the film Prisoners of the Ghostland, Cage spoke about the current status of his career, and then revealed if he currently has plans to retire.

“At my age, the job that I have is to stay interested, because if I’m not interested, you’re not going to be interested,” Cage explained. “It gets more difficult the older we get. So I have to find new ways of expressing myself, new challenges. But I do think, God willing, that once I finish the next two movies, I’m going to take some time off, because I think it’s time to recharge.”

“No, no, no. No, no. That can’t happen,” Cage said of retirement. “To do what I do in cinema has been like a guardian angel for me, and I need it. I’m healthier when I’m working, I need a positive place to express my life experience, and filmmaking has given me that. So I’m never going to retire. Where are we now, 117 movies? [Laughs] What’s funny is, my argument with people who go, ‘You work too much,’ was ‘I like working, and it’s healthy, I’m happy when I’m working, and by the way, guys like Cagney and Bogart, they were doing hundreds of movies.’ And then I went, ‘I’d better check that,’ and I went, ‘Oops.’ [Laughs] Jerry Lewis was one of my friends, and he and I would go and have dinner together, and he would say, ‘How many movies you got?’ I go, ‘I got about 100, how many you got?’ ‘I got 40. So you got twice as much as me?’ ‘Well, I didn’t know that, Jerry.’”

So, while Cage isn’t retiring anytime soon, he is expected to skewer his career with the upcoming film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which will see the actor portraying a fictionalized version of himself, who must channel his most beloved characters after his family is put in danger.

“I will never see this movie,” Cage said of the film in a recent interview with Variety. “I’m told it’s a good movie. I’m told people love it and are enjoying the ride, but I made that for the audience. It’s too much for me to go to the premiere and sit there with everybody. Psychologically, that’s too bizarre and whacked out for me.”

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is set to be released on April 22, 2022.