Nicolas Cage has assured fans of his filmography that he never plans on retiring from acting.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Oscar-winning actor declared that he had banished the thought of retirement from his mind because he feels healthier and happier when he's working on a project. He also recognized the importance of cinema and the role that the industry has played in his life.
"That can't happen," Cage said of retirement. "To do what I do in cinema has been like a guardian angel for me, and I need it. I'm healthier when I'm working, I need a positive place to express my life experience, and filmmaking has given me that. So I'm never going to retire. Where are we now, 117 movies?"
"What's funny is, my argument with people who go, 'You work too much,' was 'I like working, and it's healthy, I'm happy when I'm working, and by the way, guys like Cagney and Bogart, they were doing hundreds of movies,'" he explained. "And then I went, 'I'd better check that,' and I went, 'Oops…'"
Cage has starred in a huge number of movies over the course of his acting career, and there's no sign of his workload slowing down. He recently landed one of the biggest roles that Hollywood has to offer as he found himself cast as Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, directed by Tom Gormican.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent features Nicolas Cage as its fictional main character — someone trying to balance family life and a career while simultaneously finding himself caught in the crossfire of a Mexican cartel leader and the CIA. It's expected to pay homage to some of Cage's former films like Leaving Las Vegas, Face-Off, and Gone in 60 Seconds.
Before that, Cage will be seen in Sion Sono's Prisoners of the Ghostland, portraying a bank robber who is offered his freedom in exchange for retrieving a wealthy warlord's missing granddaughter. He stars in the neo-noir Western film alongside Sofia Boutella, Bill Mosley, Nick Cassavetes, and Tak Sakaaguchi.
Prisoners of the Ghostland arrives in theaters and on VOD and Digital on September 17 following its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January. IGN awarded the movie a 7 out of 10, calling it "a particularly surreal tribute to the Western, the Samurai film, and the Mad Max post-apocalypse."
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.