Nicolas Cage Discusses Acting With CBS Sunday Morning’s Charles Osgood

ACTOR NICOLAS CAGE TELLS CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD HIS CRITICALLY PRAISED PERFORMANCES ARE NOT OVER THE TOP, BUT RATHER OUTSIDE OF THE BOX 

Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage’s trademark acting style isn’t over the top, but rather outside of the box, he tells Lee Cowan in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD, to be broadcast April 6 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.

“I don’t believe in the term ‘over the top,’” Cage tells Cowan. “I believe in the term ‘outside of the box.’ Let’s take chances, let’s keep trying new things, and that’s how you reinvent yourself. And that’s how you stay fresh.”

Cage has built a career on films where his character is like a simmering pot waiting to boil. He has been acting for 35 years and starred in such films as “Con Air,” “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “Raising Arizona.”  He also earned an Academy Award for his work in “Leaving Las Vegas.”

“I will promise you if I can give you two good scenes, which is what I always try to do in every movie, then I feel like I’ve done my job,” Cage tells Cowan.

His performance style of calm speaking followed by outburst deliveries have been dubbed “Cage-isms,” which the actor finds funny. “It is music,” he says. “You know, I think all of this, if you listen to different kinds of music, you have moments that are explosive, and you have quieter moments.”

Cage talks with Cowan about his new film, “Joe,” which is filled with quieter moments, how he was influenced by going to the movies with his father, and how seeing James Dean in “East of Eden” changed his life.

“You see Dean go through this extraordinary nervous breakdown,” Cage tells Cowan. “And I was in the theater, I was, I was a wreck. Nothing affected me that deeply. I knew then the power of a film performance, what you could do, what you could achieve with film performance, and that’s when I said this is what I’m going to do.”

CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.