Top 10 performances of Nicolas Cage.

I had never seen anyone act like him before – wildly mannered but always heartfelt – and there was something about his fearless lurch towards the ridiculous to achieve something unique, and maybe even glorious, that struck me as inspiring.

In a 2013 Reddit AMA, Ethan Hawke confirmed that he, too, is a Cage superfan: “He’s the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting; he’s successfully taken us away from an obsession with naturalism into a kind of presentation style of acting that I imagine was popular with the old troubadors.”

Does he do these smaller movies because they give him the space to experiment with his, shall we say, unique style of acting?

“Absolutely. I like to break forms, try different things, and I don’t think studios are comfortable with that. But in an independently spirited film, I can do that. Also, if I don’t have somewhere to go in the morning and a job to do, it can be very self-destructive. Then I’m just going to sit and order two bottles of red wine and dissolve, and I don’t want to be that person, so I have to work,” he says. After this interview, he says, he has to learn lines for three upcoming films.

When a female friend was over at his place recently, he showed her Vampire’s Kiss, his too-little-known 80s horror gem about a man who believes a one-night stand has turned him into a vampire. “I think it scared her. She left,” he says, laughing.