Nicolas Cage has always been a fearless actor, unafraid to go big and potentially look foolish. He’s even suffered for his art. But even he thinks that at least once he went too far.
While doing press for Renfield, the outside-the-box take on Dracula in which he plays the iconic bloodsucker, the Oscar-winning thespian was asked about Vampire’s Kiss, arguably the most bananas film on his extended CV. Released in 1988, it finds him playing a very ‘80s Manhattan literary agent who comes to believe he’s becoming a vampire. He’s not, but at one point his delusions so get the better of him that he eats a cockroach. Thing is, Cage did that for real.
Cage was still young at the time, and age has mellowed him, at least when it comes to eating live bugs. “I’ll never do that again,” told Yahoo! Entertainment. “I’m sorry I did it at all.”
On the DVD commentary track for Vampire’s Kiss, Cage said he saw eating a live cockroach as a “business decision,” saying that when “when people see the cockroach go in my mouth… [they] really react.” He also said director Robert Bierman made him do it twice, he thinks as a prank, claiming he was always going to use the first take anyway.
Cage’s Renfield costar Nicholas Hoult also ate real bugs for Renfield, but not a cockroach. Instead he ate flavored crickets, which one can order off of Amazon. How far we’ve come since 1988.
You can watch Cage discuss the scene in the video below.
(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)