Nicolas Cage Admits He Took All Those Straight-To-VOD Roles To Pay His Debts, “But I Never Phoned It In”

If you look at Nicolas Cage‘s IMDb page, you might be shocked to learn he has made nearly fifty movies since 2010, many of which you’ve probably never heard of. Cage, an Oscar-winner who at one point in his career earned $20 million per picture and starred in blockbusters like Face/Off and Con Air, discussed his career in a recent interview with GQ, explaining that he worked without stopping for nearly ten years in order to pay off his massive debts, mostly on movies that went straight to VOD.

In the interview, Cage discusses a series of poor financial decisions, mostly due to several indulgent real estate purchases he made just before the real estate bubble burst around 2008, that set him spiraling into debt. In addition to that debt, he was saddled with the costs of caring for his elderly mother, and when traditional film offers dried up, he found himself desperate to pay off his debts without filing for bankruptcy. His way out of financial ruin was to take whatever work he could get.

“The phone stopped ringing,” Cage explained. “It was like, ‘What do you mean we’re not doing National Treasure 3? It’s been 14 years. Why not?… I’ve got all these creditors and the IRS and I’m spending $20,000 a month trying to keep my mother out of a mental institution, and I can’t. It was just all happening at once.”

The result was a prolific string of films, most of which were released straight to VOD. It’s a popular way for actors to make money these days (Bruce Willis has become a master of this; it’s only March and the man has 11 IMDb credits to his name for this year alone). But despite the reputation that straight-to-home-video movies have, Cage says he never gave less than 100% in any of his performances. “When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all. They didn’t work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didn’t work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring.”

By now Cage’s debts have been paid off, and his career had been on an upturn with critically acclaimed roles in Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which comes out next month. From here on out though, he says, “I’m just going to focus on being extremely selective, as selective as I can be. I would like to make every movie as if it were my last.”