Nicolas Cage’s Best Acting Performances, Ranked

Given their sensibilities, it’s a surprise that Cage and David Lynch only worked with each other once. But that singular union remains something to behold as Cage exudes cool as the Elvis-influenced, snakeskin jacket-wearing Sailor Ripley in Wild at Heart, based on Barry Gifford’s novel of the same name. Cage’s Sailor is a renegade romantic who, along with his girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern), breaks parole and escapes from California to Texas. Their strange trip through the American Southwest is frequently interrupted by criminal Lula’s mother, Marrietta (Diane Ladd) hired to kill Sailor. There’s a beautiful raw quality about Cage’s performance here, one that recalls Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and evokes certain traits of mid-20th century masculinity, but also dismantles those traits as Sailor’s loose cannon antics and ego always subside in favor of Luna and true romance.

One can’t help but admire Cage’s ability to play big and leave nothing on the table, and that’s exactly what he does here in John Woo’s Face/Off as terrorist-for-hire, Castor Troy. After FBI Agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) undergoes an experimental medical procedure to remove his face and replace it with Troy’s to gain intel on the location of a bomb, Troy wakes up from a coma, faceless, and decides to wear Archer’s face as his own. It’s a brilliantly insane concept that gives both actors, known for their bold choices, a chance to imitate the mannerisms and vocal inflections of the other actor and play two characters in one film. From the opening scene, in which Troy is disguised as a Priest, Cage brings an unhinged mania to the role. While he’s not commonly known for playing villains, Cage relishes the opportunity here, and even when playing the heroic Archer, he’s never sidelined as the straight man, but rather draws on the obsessive quality Travolta brings to Archer at the film’s start.

The most recent addition to the Cage canon sees the actor in the realm of devils again, but we’ve never seen him quite like this. As the titular serial killer, Longlegs, in Oz Perkins’ horror film, Cage brings a perverse sense of spectral unease as he matches wits against FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe). With his high-pitched lyrical voice, sounding like a hellish version of Tiny Tim, and his heavily botoxed visage, Cage makes for a striking and horrifying figure who can seemingly be anywhere and everywhere at once. But those are merely the trappings of Longlegs, an aesthetic that would elicit an adverse response from anyone regardless of the actor.

Where Cage’s performance takes the character is in its reminder that Longlegs is all too human. On a trip to a local hardware store, Longlegs is confronted by a teenager who merely sees him as freakish and weird rather than scary, and Longlegs’ quiet, almost embarrassed reaction to that binds him to a fragile manhood, a mortality that exists regardless of the borrowed power he’s utilized. And in that moment, we start to peel back the layers of this serial killer and gather clues about the man who was probably once a young wannabe rockstar obsessed with T. Rex and occultism who found the Devil and became his servant. Horrific, yet more manageable than the evil behind him and the secrets his works encouraged.

Kristoffer Borgli’s surrealist black comedy horror movie stars Cage as Paul Matthews, an evolutionary biology professor who starts appearing in people’s dreams, first in odd and funny ways, then in nightmare scenarios. The dreams provide Cage an outlet to explore a variety of impressionistic forms that exist as small sketches within the dream world. Simultaneously, Paul, perhaps the world’s most uninteresting man, goes from being a nebbish everyman to a celebrity, a monster and is eventually resigned to become a nobody, an exile with nowhere left to run.

There’s a heartbreaking and earnest quality Cage brings to the role, and while the film can be quite funny, particularly within the dreams, Cage himself never treats Paul as a joke. A scene in which Paul attempts to have an affair with a young intern at the marketing firm results in a spasm of farts and premature ejaculation that is perhaps the most horrifying and discomforting moment of the movie, because what would otherwise be a moment of frat-bro comedy is given the space by Cage’s performance to be a painful moment of humanity rarely given time or interest in most films. By the end of the film, it feels safe to call Paul Matthews one of Cage’s most heartbreaking roles.

While Nic Cage isn’t often discussed in terms of his presence and impact in romantic comedies, his breakthrough performance came in a film that is widely considered to be one of Hollywood’s best rom-coms. Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck stars Cage as Ronny Cammareri, an Italian-American baker who catches the eyes and heart of his estranged brother’s fiancé, Loretta Castorini, played by the one and only Cher. What makes Moonstruck such a standout is how unconventional it is, and how fully developed Loretta and Ronny are as characters and not simply, or even at all in Ronny’s case, pieces of eye candy spouting trope-filled romantic lines that almost anyone could tie their heartstrings too. No, these characters are raw, messy, angry and full of passion and grievances. This isn’t a tale of first love, but rather lovers who have had their hearts ripped out of them. Yet, in all of that tragedy, Moonstruck manages to be to be uniquely funny. Even Ronny’s tragedy, being left by his wife after losing his hand to a bread slicer during an argument with his brother, is funny. Not necessarily “ha ha” funny, but rather amusing in the recognition that our romantic leads used to have quirks like this, and could be morose, self-depreciating and a little homeless-looking.

During this period in his career, Cage was primarily recognized for starring in a wide range of indie movies and lending his voice to a few animated films, following a string of financial and critical disappointments in Hollywood. While much of his live-action work outside of Hollywood had little cultural hold, Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy electrified audiences’ and shifted the conversations around Cage again. While Mandy did not become a theatrical hit, it gained a cult following and, at least for horror fans and film aficionados, served as a vindication for Cage’s talent which the mainstream had largely reduced to memes. For a certain demographic, Mandy, along with 2018’s Mom and Dad, reignited interest in Cage Rage, popularized by the infamous YouTube video, “Nicolas Cages Losing His Shit” by Harry Hanrahan.

While Cage’s performance as the chainsaw-wielding Red Miller is at times outrageous and not without humor, there’s a primal element to his performance. Cage wields unrestrained and unguarded hurt as Red Miller as he takes vengeance on a cult and their demonic biker gang who killed his wife, Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). For all of the film’s experimental and dreamlike qualities, Mandy is centered on Red’s grief, no better exemplified by the character sobbing and processing the brutal murder of his wife by downing an entire bottle of vodka. As insane as things get, Cage’s great emotional capacity, disquieting in its uninhibited form, grounds the film in something real. 

And on the subject of disquieting forms of uninhibited emotions, there’s Robert Bierman’s Vampire’s Kiss, which arguably sees Cage in his most unhinged role as yuppie, Peter Loew, who believes he’s been turned into a vampire. Loew is a despicable, self-interested, misogynistic, naval-gazing literary agent, and that’s before his delusions of a one-night stand with a vampire, Rachel (Jennifer Beals), begin. While his therapist Dr. Glaser (Elizabeth Ashley) tries to offer some explanation to Peter about his fantasy, including an incident with a bat he can no longer remember, Peter sinks further into delusion, living in both a real and fictional world. Peter’s belief that he is a vampire allows him to give himself over to the depravity that was already in him.

What begins with consuming insects quickly escalates as Peter pushes his harassment of secretary Alva (María Conchita Alonso) further, resulting in attempted rape. A later incident sees Peter donning a pair of plastic vampire teeth and ripping a woman’s throat out at a nightclub. Cage plays Peter as a manic depressive, possessed by wild mood swings that result in either hedonism or moments of self-loathing where he tries to take his own life. Cage makes this pathetic man fascinating to watch, and in the third act, as Peter moans and shambles his way through the streets of New York City begging for someone to kill him, it is hard to feel any sympathy for this man yet Cage imbues the character with such pathos that you hate to see him go.

The Coen brothers’ regional crime comedy, Raising Arizona, sees Cage as the well-meaning, though occasionally foolish, “Hi” McDunnough. Hi and his wife Ed (Holly Hunter) want to start a family of their own, but because of Ed’s infertility and Hi’s past criminal record, they are unable to conceive or adopt. So, the two hatch a plan to steal one of the quintuplets recently born to a local furniture store magnate, Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife. Encouraged to return to a life of crime by his former partners, Hi finds himself being pulled by the life he knew and the desires for responsibilities of love, marriage and parenthood, all while being chased down by the monstrous motorcycle-riding bounty hunter, Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb), who seeks to return the baby to Nathan Arizona by any means possible.

Despite the eccentric tone, touches of magical realism and outrageous scenarios, Hi and Ed are offered a real sense of empathy by the Coens. These aren’t bad people; Cage and Hunter do a brilliant job driving that point home. They are merely dreamers, and Cage and Hunter play that sentimentality to a wonderful effect. Cage’s dreaming monologue at the end of the film is delivered with such simple humanity and optimism that it still stands as one of the finest scenes of his career.

Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead is a trip through hell on the streets of New York City. Cage stars as paramedic Frank Pierce, driven to the brink of sanity by depression, insomnia and the fact he hasn’t saved a single life in three months. Set over three nights, Pierce is partnered with the eager and opportunistic Larry (John Goodman), the devoutly religious Marcus (Ving Rhames) and the violent and unhinged Tom (Tom Sizemore) as he witnesses overdoses, suicides and cardiac arrests that shape his waking hours.

Haunted by the ghosts of the people he’s failed to save, Pierce finds solace in the company of a former junkie, Mary (Patricia Arquette). Echoing Christ’s three days in Hell, Bringing Out the Dead casts Pierce as a suffering savior who has given his life to help others, while in desperate need of a resurrection. Cage casts a striking image as the hollow-out, hunched and nearly emaciated Pierce, who looks like death himself. There’s exhaustion in every look and every utterance, and his exhaustion transcends the screen to the point that when he is finally able to rest, we as a captive audience, feel a weight lifted off of us as well.

Cage’s Oscar-winning role is something to behold. But it’s a heartbreaking distillation of self-destruction. Mike Figgis’ film, based on the semi-autobiographical novel of John O’Brien, stars Cage as screenwriter Ben Sanderson, who after losing his job, family and friends due to his alcoholism, decides to head to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. In Vegas, Ben befriends a prostitute, Sera (Elisabeth Shue), and the two form a pact in which he won’t scold her for her occupation and she won’t ask him to stop drinking.

Their relationship is charming and gives the film a spark of levity, but it becomes clear that while the two have developed feelings for each other, nothing will lead Ben off his path of self-destruction, and not even Sera can save him from what he set out to do. Cage is brilliant in this, bringing humor, insight and kindness to Ben, which makes his self-destruction all the more painful, even in the face of its inevitability. He manages to create this fully-rounded human within a constant state of drunkenness that possesses such fragility that he’s an endearing character yet one that we as an audience, like Sera, can never allow ourselves to invest too much of our hopes in.

When Pig was first announced, the plot synopsis of a truffle hunter living alone in the wilderness on the hunt for his kidnapped foraging pig sounded like a riff on John Wick. So, it’s hard to fault audiences for initially believing they were in for another Cage Rage scenario of the B-movie variety. But that’s not what Michael Sarnoski’s Pig is at all. Pig is a poetic and existential meditation of love, loss and artistry. Cage’s performance as Rob, a once-famous chef who retreated to the woods after the death of his wife is one of his finest performances, and by the actor’s own testament, his personal favorite, and the film of his that he most wants audiences to see. So, what’s so special about a truffle hunter searching for his stolen pig alongside a young and arrogant restaurant supplier, Amir (Alex Wolff)? As Rob says, “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”

Sarnoski approaches life not as moments of possession, not of life owned by others, but in the authenticity of being, in the creation of experiences and what they evoke — something to care about. And Rob’s pig was something for him to care about, a means to keep the love in his heart for his wife alive and for him to continue connecting to humans, even if indirectly and at a distance. It’s a theme Sarnoski continued exploring in A Quiet Pace: Day One. Within the acknowledgment of the temporary nature of life, Rob offers insight into what is left behind and how individuals are remembered. It’s not difficult to understand why Pig is Cage’s favorite as the pursuit of art and the creation of lasting experiences through performances that reveal themselves as the ideals Cage strives for. And even amidst setbacks, it’s an ideal befitting one of our most unique, and assuredly memorable, performers.

Spike Jonze’s meta black comedy, Adaptation, based on the film’s screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s own struggles to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, features a tour de force performance by Cage. Or rather, performances as Cage plays a partly fictionalized version of Kaufman and his entirely fictional twin brother, Donald. Charlie is depressed, socially awkward and bound to the idea of rejecting traditional screenplay writing in his attempt to adapt The Orchid Thief, whereas Donald, who also decided to become a screenwriter, is confident, well-spoken and leans into all the tropes of storytelling to great success. The subtleties and tics Cage creates between the two give life to both characters, and while Donald could’ve easily become a parody of Charlie, he isn’t because of Cage’s performance, along with Jonze and Kaufman’s craft.

Despite being the antithesis of Charlie, Donald is, in part, right in the way he thinks, which leads Charlie to have Donald pretend to be him to interview Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). In doing so, the struggle to adapt The Orchid Thief becomes an adaptation of The Orchid Thief by way of Hollywood as Orlean’s non-fiction book becomes a highly fictional tale of Streep’s Orlean having a secret love affair with the orchid thief, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), who uses the flowers to create a mind-altering drug. The film is a weird narrative and tonal space for an actor to navigate. Yet, Cage does so with ease creating an emotional center between the two brothers, which in reality is Kaufman navigating his desires and anxieties as a writer.

And before the end, Cage as Donald delivers a line that’s the perfect mantra for all artists with such sincerity and resonance that it’s difficult to hear without immediately getting misty-eyed: “You are what you love, not what loves you.” In the context of all the praise, awards, negative reviews and expectations, there is no doubt Nicolas Cage is what he loves.