Nicolas Cage Shares Why He Turned Down Both ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Franchises
Nicolas Cage isn’t really making a comeback because he never went away, as the semi-fictionalized version of himself emphasizes in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. But the actor’s value is still unquestionably higher than it has been in a long time.
The Academy Award winner has been on a hot streak recently, with his most recent action comedy receiving the best reviews of his career and pushing his previous work Pig from the top of the all-time Cage rankings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Cage has previously spoken about the reasons behind his not taking big budget blockbuster deals for various reasons, including budgetary concerns and creative differences. Cage revealed to People that he had rejected two of the most iconic franchises in history because committing to either The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings wasn’t worth the personal sacrifice.
“There’s no version of Nic Cage that didn’t put family first over career. I turned down Lord of the Rings and I turned down Matrix because I didn’t want to go to New Zealand for three years or Australia for three years because I needed to be home with my son Weston, that’s a fact.”
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to suggest that witnessing Nicolas Cage strutting around Middle-Earth in Peter Jackson‘s classic trilogy may have been distracting to the point of disrupting immersion, but it’s conceivable that he turned down even more well-known roles that we don’t know about.
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