Nicolas Cage is one of the greatest living actors male actors. When people bring up names for best male actors frequently the names of De Niro, Sean Penn, or Daniel Day-Lewis come up. Nobody mentions Cage though who has been giving much better acting performances than De Niro has in years.
The main problem that comes from people's perceptions of Cage is that they pretty much have only seen him in movies such as seen in the following clip.
For the record, I don't believe Cage's performances in Face/Off, The Rock, or National Treasure are bad. They're awesome. But everytime when people give judgements on Cage's acting ability and dismiss him as an actor, they seem to almost always have never seen a good performance of his.
Those unfamiliar with Cage will be surprised to hear that he won the Academy Award for Best Actor back in 1997 for Leaving Las Vegas. His performance in Leaving Las Vegas is easily one of the best performances of the 90's. What's so incredible about Cage is that he has so many good performances every couple of years just the same as actors like Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis. The thing that separates Cage from actors like these though is that he takes on crappy movies for the paycheck. He does these crappy movies because he's a working man and you know what good for him not sitting on his butt all the time. I understand that one's opinion is an opinion and therefore can't be wrong. Saying Cage is a bad actor though is almost always based on an uneducated opinion. If one were to watch his performances in Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing Out the Dead, Adaptation., Matchstick Men, or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans though and came back to me and told me he's a bad actor, this then becomes an error of objective fact. Has Sean Penn, Daniel-Day Lewis, Cary Grant, Robert De Niro, or Jimmy Stewart ever given a not so great performance?
As an actor he's fearless which is something I'd like to see more in actors today. Cage isn't afraid of "over-acting" as some think he does quite often because he really doesn't care. He doesn't care though because he know he can pull it off. A co-worker recently cited how a great actor makes the best of bad material. However for her example she cited Meryl Streep's performance in A Prairie Home Companion. I myself haven't seen the film but Roger Ebert awarded the film 4 stars and it's directed by 4 time nominee for Best Director Robert Altman. So I'm not sure how "bad" the material is, regardless Streep worked with a great director in that film. When being lead by a great director, the risks taken aren't quite as vast or big. That's the thing about Cage that people don't understand, he's a risk taker.
What other actor takes as big of risks as Cage? Meryl Streep most definitely doesn't. She's a great actress but she doesn't really ever goes hands and feet into her performances the way that Cage does. Daniel Day-Lewis gave a very average performance in last year's Nine (for what I expect of him) but he's still acclaimed as one of the greatest living actors. The only thing that really separates Cage and Lewis is their selection of material.
Let's take a look at the directors Daniel Day-Lewis has worked with over the past decade.
Martin Scorsese
Rebecca Miller (Lewis's wife)
P.T. Anderson
Rob Marshall
Daniel Day-Lewis wasn't exactly risking it with any of these directors. Scorsese and P.T. Anderson are two of the best living directors of film. Rob Marshall was nominated for Best Director for his film adaptation of Chicago.
Cage on the other hand, well I won't even list all the directors he's worked with because unlike Lewis he's been in about 50 movies in the past decade. Over the past decade though, Cage worked with Spike Jonze, Ridley Scott, and Werner Herzog giving stellar performances that are on par with Daniel Day-Lewis's work. When paired with a great director though, Cage works wonders. Nicolas Cage is one the 46 actors ever to have been nominated for Best Actor more than once.
Cage is one of the most versatile actors in the business and is certainly one of the greatest living actors today and I wish people wouldn't call him one of "the worst actors ever".
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