Film Producers From The United States

"I had made so many promises to myself about things that I wanted to explore, things I wanted to try, and how I would like to grow as a person that I had made no time for. And I thought, 'That's enough."

"I had a lot of promises that I made to myself, years ago, about things that I wanted to learn and try."

"I put on a few pounds. I also put on some breasts and a baby bump. Bridget is a perfectly normal weight and I’ve never understood why it matters so much."

"My imperfections always surface at the most inopportune time. Usually on live TV, in an interview situation, and always on a red carpet. There’s always something happening, but that’s life. You just have to move forward."

"You cannot be a good storyteller if you don’t have life experiences, and you can’t relate to people."

"I know that great things happen when this team gets together, and I was optimistic about doing a very entertaining film."

"As an actress, it’s a dream come true role. You run the gamut of human emotions with each incarnation of the story. She’s an authentic character and I have so much fun playing her."

"The superhero field is a field where there’s not a lot of representation. It’s traditionally white male, but the fans look like the world. So, naturally, people are going to yearn to see someone flying around doing these incredible things that looks like them. It’s an incredible opportunity, but that’s what keeps me up at night – for better and for worse."

"Africa's a continent that's known for its resources, you know. It's very rich in terms of any kind of resource that you can get out of the ground that has value. You're going to find it in abundance somewhere on that continent, whether it's oil, whether it's rubber, whether it's gems or precious metals. It led to colonization and exploitation. It led to borders being drawn, not by the people who are from there, you know. And it led to the mental horrors of colonization, which comes with being told that you're less than, and not worthy of, and losing your language — losing your heritage, and the cousin of colonization, which is a very scary relative of it, is the theft of bodies, is what happened to my ancestors."

"You know, I just want to make films that resonate with me, that are interesting to me, that deal with themes that I'm passionate about."

"For me, the pressure's always been there, 'cause I'm in a career that's unexpected, in terms of where I'm from and what I look like, you know, how old I am. So I'll always feel pressure. I'll always feel like I'm up against odds that are kind of insurmountable and, 'Man, if I don't get this right, I might not ever work in this town again.' But you kind of got to tune that stuff out."

"I definitely want to push myself. I definitely want to be on the outside edge of what’s comfortable for me creatively, on the outside edge of what I’ve done before. I want to be pushing my own boundaries, but I try not to compare my films to my other films because I think that’s probably not a healthy way to look at it."

"Progress comes in ebbs and flows. You’ve got to put your foot on the gas when it comes … or things can go back to where they were."

"Because people would talk about grief, oftentimes saying, ‘y’all got hit with a wave.’ But the grief can carry you or you can feel like you’re drowning in it."

"You don’t know what your life is going to bring. You don’t know what’s going to happen."

"You look at any society in any period of time, they had their version of how they did their myth-making. Whether it was vaudeville, whether it was plays, whether it was on the plains of Africa ... Right now, it's these big, huge, large-canvas films."

"For one, like, this medium of superhero films and this blockbuster medium, it's just myth-making but on terms that are current. That's why these movies make a lot money. That's why people talk about them, you know what I mean, people dress up as them."

"As filmmakers, you'll see actors working on a movie. Next thing you know, they're dating. Just because it's long hours, you're remote on location, and you end up becoming close with these people. You got no other choice but to. Sometimes that can get complicated."

"People are prisoners of their own perspectives."

"It was a priority for us that we make the film something that could work for audiences as a piece of filmmaking, as a piece of cinema, as a piece of entertainment."

"Understanding that we’re in control and that, at the end of the day, it’s you against you. If you are putting yourself in a position to be the best version of yourself, then it means you’re understanding yourself. And understanding yourself means that life isn’t perfect and it’s never gonna be perfect, but it’s about progression."

"When God talks, you got to listen, and I swear life is funny. Because some of the craziest things that happen to you end up being the things that you needed most. And in this case, I honestly feel like God basically told me to sit down."

"I feel that in today’s time, what people are most selfish with is information. Nobody wants to give information. You got to ask for it. If you ask for it, then, “All right, maybe, maybe I’ll tell you some stuff”, but it’s a search and find."

"We’re putting a group of men together that are talented enough and aren't afraid to make fun of themselves."

"People make mistakes, and from mistakes they should be allowed time to recover."

"Avoid the simple problems, because they become the big problems."

"When you start doing it for the perceptions of others, you’re never going to win. Your biggest believer in what you do should be you."

"I always say to myself, 'I never had a career, only work.' What I mean by that is sometimes — and I won't mention names — but when you get into this career-minded perception of one's self it can be a slippery slope, and it can lead to things where you start believing in your own mythos and you start taking yourself way too seriously. You become pretentious and then you fall into the realm of diva, and that's when mistakes happen in your personal life and on camera."

"Karaoke is kind of like a prayer. You’re not supposed to videotape that. I’m not a professional singer. I’m just enjoying my life and blowing off some steam with friends."

"I think I’m going to continue, not so much to remind people or myself, but continue to play parts that allow me to express some meaning or some understanding of what it means to be a person."

"I wanted to create a kind of wild and artistic and bizarre image. I have changed in terms of what I want to express, and what I want my perception to be. But I personally think I’m very boring. I find myself perfectly content staying at home and playing with my cats or spending time with my boys, who are now older and into their own interests."

"I think this quarantine experience, and the fear of the pandemic itself, only augments the closeness we feel with our animal brothers and sisters. It’s interesting timing that this movie is coming out as we slowly begin to emerge from that experience. I was already close with my animals, but it only made us closer because I really needed their support during that time."

"Well, all art is therapeutic and a positive place to transmute emotions from the negative into a positive."

"PLAYBOY: Your salary is shooting up into the multimillions per movie–reportedly $ 4 million to $ 7 million. Do those numbers make you chuckle? CAGE: I don't chuckle. I have respect for the dollar. PLAYBOY: It's a lot of money. CAGE: There's one thing I have some difficulty with, and that's hanging on to money. I find ways of spending money that mystify everybody around me. They're amazed. They want to know how I do it."

"The media sometimes talks about the Video-on-Demand work. The first thing I want to say about that is that, in my opinion, anyone that says “straight to video” in this age is a dinosaur. It’s past tense. Everything is streaming now. It’s one of the best ways to get your movie out there now and have it re-played. It’s been terrific for me."

"My interest has always been cinema or films, because that’s what I was most compelled by. I was most inspired by the movie actors that I grew up with. I only hesitate to say I would because my process now is that I need about two months for the libretto of the screenplay to sink into my instruments so that I can not have to think about dialogue. That’s the first thing that’s going cave an actor in, having anxiety about not knowing their lines. I don’t want that."

"I developed this mantra, which is: “I never had a career, I only have work.” And when I say that, I am saying that I’m a better man when I’m working because I don’t want to be that guy that’s sitting by a pool getting bombed on mai tais and Dom Perignon."

"There’s a difference between remorse and regret. I don’t have any regret. And when I say that, what I’m trying to say is that I’m applying my mistakes to my present so that I learned to improve on myself and be a better man. And I do think every movie I’ve made that hasn’t worked has all led me to this place where I’m at now, where I can do a movie like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and I can tell the story with some integrity and authenticity to it. Everything happened for a reason. I have to look at it like that because that’s the healthiest and most positive way of looking at it."

"But let me say one thing: I am completely antidrug. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink when I work. Sometimes in between movies I’ll have some drinks, but not always. I make so many characters, and I go so internal with them, that sometimes, when I’m not filming, wine or Champagne is like an eraser to a chalkboard. You can erase the character and make a clean slate so you can start making a new character. I hope that makes sense."

"I’m not career-minded. My mantra has always been “work.” I never had a “career.” I only had “work.” That was a way of going through different movies. I find something in a movie that I think works. It’s like a rock album. Maybe not all of it works in the script, but there’s one or two songs, one or two scenes that work."

"I had gone on a bit of a tear for a while, exploring what I thought I could do with the boundaries or the limitations of film performance, and I had this philosophy, if you will, that what you could do in one art form, you might be able to do in another, and why not try it? Why not try something surrealistic or operatic or abstract or impressionistic in film performance? It was more experimental. A lot of it was very satisfying and very rewarding for me and my personal dreams about what I wanted to examine with film performance, but I had done that, and I felt that I had developed enough life experience, memories, dreams, where I could return to a more naturalistic, quiet style."

"Which is a word I don’t like anymore, ‘acting’. I sound like a pretentious fart for saying ‘thespian’ but acting now has become like lying. It sounds like I’m lying. If you’re a great actor, you’re a great liar. ‘Thespian’ seems more like it’s about finding some truth within and then projecting it for others to get it. At least, it does to me. But I’m not always on the same wavelength as everyone else."

"Well, see, I’ve always viewed myself as a student. I would never say, “Oh, I’m a master.” I am a student. In that, I mean the idea is to keep learning and to keep looking and discovering. One of the things that really excites me, if you have that mindset, is working with younger actors."

"As a film actor, my job is to facilitate the director’s vision. If there’s something I’m doing that they don’t agree with, I drop it."

"I do love romantic movies, but at my age it doesn’t happen very often. I’ve always admired love stories—the expression of love is like white light to me. Every color of the universe is in the love story."

"If I have my breakfast, then I can think, and that includes spiritual things, or whatever it is I want to do, meditate or read a book or watch a movie, and so I respect the food because that comes first for me. I think the movie shows the power of the experience that we all have with food."

"Nicolas Cage is a student who is on a path in cinema to try to keep learning and finding great characters with which to tell stories with."

"I can’t go into specifics or percentages or ratios, but yeah, money is a factor. I’m going to be completely direct about that. There’s no reason not to be. There are times when it’s more of a factor than not. I still have to feel that, whether or not the movie around me entirely works, I’ll be able to deliver something and be fun to watch. But yes, it’s no secret that mistakes have been made in my past that I’ve had to try to correct. Financial mistakes happened with the real estate implosion that occurred, in which the lion’s share of everything I had earned was pretty much eradicated. But one thing I wasn’t going to do was file for bankruptcy. I had this pride thing where I wanted to work my way through anything, which was both good and bad."

"My former wife is a truly wonderful person."

"I found marriage somewhat stifling. I don't know that I am the kind of man who ought to be married."