Nicolas Cage's Longlegs director praises 'brilliant' actor who 'wanted to do a disappearing act' for horror film
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Nicolas Cage's Longlegs director has praised the 'brilliant' actor, who 'wanted to do a disappearing act' for the new horror movie.
Longlegs generated a feverish buzz online in the run-up to its release, with Nicolas drawing particular attention for his turn as a serial killer.
In the trailer, viewers are able to hear his chilling voiceover, but his actual physical appearance remains mostly shrouded in mystery.
However the audience does catch a brief glimpse of his face looking bloated and disfigured after suffering a botched plastic surgery.
Now with the film out in theaters, Longlegs director Oz Perkins has lifted the curtain back on Nicolas' process of becoming the villain, in an interview with People.
Nicolas Cage 's Longlegs director has praised the 'brilliant' actor, who 'wanted to do a disappearing act' for the new horror movie
Longlegs generated a feverish buzz online in the run-up to its release, with Nicolas drawing particular attention for his turn as a serial killer
Oz himself has a lifelong link to the horror genre, as his father was Anthony Perkins, who played the crossdressing murderer Norman Bates in Psycho.
Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent on the hunt for a serial killer who leaves a note that reads: 'LONGLEGS,' with the corpse of each of his victims.
Nicolas, who plays the killer, 'really wanted to do a disappearing act. He really wanted to go under prosthetics, which he hadn't really done, I don't think, in any movie before,' explained Oz.
He vaunted his 'quick' and 'diligent' leading man, who 'knows every movie, remembers every performance, knows every song lyric, is just a machine that way.'
Oz rhapsodized of the movie star: 'I don't think people fully know how truly brilliant, in terms of intelligence, Nicolas Cage is.'
'The character of Longlegs was a character that I had imagined in other scenarios. He had tried to kind of nose his way into other projects,' he added.
Longlegs was in reality 'a pathetic-ish guy who kind of comes to your kid's birthday party, sort of a clown, but not really,' shared Oz.
His relationship with the FBI agent was partly inspired by the rapport between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in The Silence Of The Lambs.
However Longlegs' eerie vocal intonations are an original creation that Oz and Nicolas came up with during the preproduction phase of the picture.
'I'd say something as oblique and out of left field as: 'Nic, I think it's T. Rex. I think Marc Bolan and T. Rex are part of this movie,'' recalled Oz.
Now with the film out in theaters, Longlegs director Oz Perkins has lifted the curtain back on Nicolas' process of becoming the villain; Oz and Nicolas pictured in May
Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent on the hunt for a serial killer who leaves a note that reads: 'LONGLEGS,' with the corpse of each of his victims
'And he said: 'Well, that's crazy. I was just teaching my son, who's learning to play the guitar, this backward guitar solo from Cosmic Dancer on Electric Warrior.''
Nicolas also drew inspiration from his late mother, the dancer Joy Vogelsang, who died aged 85 in 2021 after struggling with schizophrenia and depression.
'I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane?' Nicolas heartrendingly told Entertainment Weekly recently.
'It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through,' he added.
'She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry. I didn't know how else to describe it. I tried to put that in the Longlegs character because he's really a tragic entity.'
Nicolas said of his character: 'He's at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him and getting him to do these things.'
