Nicolas Cage was born to do many things. One of them is playing himself. Another is playing Dracula. After all, back in 1989 he did a kind of dry run for it without the bananas Vampire’s Kiss. But he finally go to play Bram Stoker’s seductive bloodsucker in the forthcoming Renfield, starring Nicholas Hoult as a modern day, less wackadoodle version of his familiar. And he thinks he only scraped the surface.
“You know, there are some minor moments here where you get to see some of the pathos in Dracula’s eyes,” Cage told Total Film (in a bit caught by Variety). “That made me think that maybe one day I might like to try for a whole movie where you’re really understanding the psyche of the character. I didn’t really have the time to delve into that here.”
Cage also said playing the role was destiny. “I also kind of always knew I had to do it at some point,” Cage explained. He even did some homework on the many previous big screen incarnations of fiction’s most popular vampire.
“I went back to Christopher Lee, in terms of his manner of speaking, but that was really only a starting point. I knew Christopher. I did a small scene with him in Season of the Witch, and I liked him very much. We had a lot of nice conversations, and he reminded me quite a bit of my father, August. So from then on, my dad sort of became the main inspiration for me.”
Renfield hits theaters on April 14.
(Via Total Film and Variety)