Nicolas Cage breaks down his 'androgynous' Longlegs role and using his mother as inspiration
Nicolas Cage shares a memory from when he was 2 that inspired his #Longlegs role. “My mom put on Noxzema cold cream…For no reason, she turned her face really fast and stared at me…The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me.” https://t.co/HJW0L9wkaJ
- Nick Romano (@NickARomano) July 12, 2024
Nicolas Cage revealed his look in the film Longlegs was inspired by his mother.
"My mom put on Noxzema cold cream. I was 2 years old, and I opened the bathroom door [to see] what she was doing," Cage recalls in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "For no reason, she turned her face really fast and stared at me after [putting on] the cold cream. The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me."
Cage continued to use his mother, who lived with schizophrenia and severe depression throughout her life, as a focal point for his performance. He previously told EW, "I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane? It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through. 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. He's at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him and getting him to do these things."
He also described the androgyny of the character.
"I see Longlegs as neither male nor female," Cage explains. "The character is very androgynous, and I often thought of, believe it or not, the hermaphrodite in the [Federico] Fellini movie Juliet and the Spirits. When the prophet was talking, she was saying, 'Do you find me beautiful?' to [Giulietta] Masina's character and going through all those really bizarre vocal shrieks and whatnot. Oz came to the table and said, 'Why don't you plump your hair in this shot?' I thought, 'That's fantastic, man. Let's do that.' And then I took it a little further and said, 'Do you find me beautiful?' He didn't put that in the movie, but I wanted that. I wanted Longlegs to be a character that wanted to be perceived as very beautiful."
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