Nicolas Cage Ripped Out His Own Real Teeth For One Of His Earliest Roles
In an interview series with Vanity Fair, Nicolas Cage revisited clips from his past films. One of the clips features his role as Ronny in "Moonstruck," a working-class Italian American with a firey temper and passion for opera. During one of his incensed monologues, you can see a missing tooth. Cage told Vanity Fair that he had pulled out his baby teeth — without anesthesia — for a previous film, "Birdy," but at that point, "they hadn't grown in yet, so when I did 'Moonstruck,' you still see a gaping hole." A character that is both rough and tender, Cage's missing tooth (along with Johnny's wooden hand) was the perfect touch for his idiosyncratic role in "Moonstruck."
For "Birdy," Nicolas Cage wanted to use the physical anguish of removing his teeth to relate to what his character went through in the war. His character Al returns after sustaining injuries from an exploding bomb, and he must go through daily life with a heavily bandaged face. Cage actually kept his head in the bandages for five weeks, even sleeping in them, so that he could understand the feeling of how Vietnam veterans were often excluded and looked down on by society (via The Telegraph). Whereas his friend Birdy deals with more mental traumas, believing that he is a bird and refusing to talk, the missing tooth is an indicator of the physical wear and tear that Al faced during the war. The physical lengths Cage went for his "Birdy" character only scratches the surface of how far he'd go in later roles.
Becoming one with his characters
Losing his teeth for "Birdy" is just one instance of Cage's extreme dedication; he has a history of putting his body through the ringer for a role to get closer to his characters' emotional lives. During the 1988 movie "Vampire's Kiss," the actor consumed live cockroaches (an action that violated animal labor laws and he later regretted) to indicate the delusion of his yuppie character transforming into a vampire.
In his Academy Award-winning role in "Leaving Las Vegas," Cage portrayed an alcoholic screenwriter on a mission to drink himself to death. He went off-script by genuinely getting drunk during a scene where his character Ben repeatedly screams, "I'm his father! I'm his father!" at a waitress who resembles his ex-wife. Cage's decision to be intoxicated during shooting allowed him to naturally experience and create Ben's incoherent ramblings and overexcited state of mind.
For "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," he sewed "ancient, thousands-of-years-old Egyptian relics" into his character's leather jacket and filled his pockets with tourmaline and onyx. He would do this to "gather these energies together and shock my imagination into believing that I was augmented in some way by them, or in contact with ancient ghosts." Cage described using these "magical trinkets" to quiet everyone on set and have them truly believe he was the Ghost Rider (via Digital Spy). These are just a few instances of how Cage consistently pushes boundaries in his performances.
A method to his antics?
Yet, despite these body modifications, Cage would not describe himself as a method actor but one who subscribes to the technique of "nouveau shamanism" — a term he coined himself, naturally. Based on ancient shamans and psychologist Brian Bates' books "The Way of Wyrd" and "The Way of the Actor," Cage described the process to Insider as expanding your imagination so that you "don't feel like you're acting, you feel like you're being." Cage appears to be an "outside-in" actor, someone who uses physicalization and tactile objects such as costumes or props in order to emotionally connect to how a character thinks, behaves, and feels.
No matter what project he is in, from the silliest blockbuster to a high-art drama, Cage is renowned for his off-the-wall and wholehearted commitment to his roles. Whether engaging in a face/off with John Travolta, enduring a cage of bees strapped to his head, or screaming in a bathroom after watching his girlfriend being burned alive, Cage consistently proves himself as a fearless performer who always goes for broke.