Nicolas Cage has played many characters throughout his 45 year-long career, but there’s one role that still stays with him. According to Entertainment Weekly, the 62-year-old actor opened up about playing terrorist Castor Troy in the 1997 film Face/Off and confessed that he “got lost” during filming.
“That is such a — I’ll quote Deborah Foreman in Valley Girl – trippin’ d—ular performance because I’m playing Castor Troy,” Cage said on a panel at New York City Comic Con. “No, excuse me. I’m playing Archer playing Troy in a prison with everybody thinking I’m Castor Troy, but I’m really Archer.”
Cage revealed playing Castor took a mental toll on him and made him question reality.
“And at one point during, like, ‘I’m Castor Troy, I’m Castor Troy!’ I got lost,” he said. “And if you look at the movie, you can see it. I’m like, ‘Who am I? Where am I? Is this real? Am I in trouble? Am I in prison? Is this [real] and I really lost it?’”
The National Treasure alum went on to win an MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo alongside John Travolta, who played FBI agent Sean Archer in the film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a follow-up to Face/Off is currently in development at Paramount Pictures.
Should Cage return to Face/Off, he has the tools to play dark characters without losing himself.
“Thankfully, that doesn’t happen to me anymore,” he said. “That was early on in my work, and I think I’ve gotten control of it because I’ve developed my craft more.”
In 2023, Cage told Collider he was enthusiastic about a Face/Off sequel and its ability to lend “itself to a lot of twists and turns and unpredictability.”
“It’s almost like if you factor in the idea of offspring and Castor and Sean having children and these children grow up, then it becomes like three-dimensional chess, and then it’s not just the two, John Travolta and myself, it’s four of us ping-ponging and going at different levels, and it becomes even more complex. I think there’s a lot of fertile ground there.”