Actor Nicolas Cage says that his latest role as a disturbed serial killer oddly hit close to home.
The Oscar winner revealed Friday that he didn’t comb the darkest crevices of his mind to prepare for “Longlegs,” in which he plays a lethal occultist, but found the inspiration in his mother, who lived with schizophrenia and severe depression until her death in 2021.
“My mom put on Noxzema cold cream,” Cage told Entertainment Weekly. “I was 2 years old, and I opened the bathroom door [to see] what she was doing. For no reason, she turned her face really fast and stared at me after [putting on] the cold cream.”
“The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me,” he explained.
“Longlegs,” the fourth film from writer-director Oz Perkins, “centers on a series of old unsolved murders that resurface in the 1990s when FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is tasked to nab the elusive killer — whose white complexion is the stuff of nightmares.
“He has a strange connection to the color white,” Cage told Entertainment Weekly about finding his character alongside Perkins. “I don’t really know what it is. He says it’s just a force he’s aware of. You don’t question it too much. He knows it when he sees it.”
Cage’s appearance has remained shrouded in mystery across marketing materials for the film. A recently shared clip showing Harker first meeting Longlegs, meanwhile, included audio of Monroe’s actual heart rate, which skyrocketed when she saw his face.
Matt Winkelmeyer via Getty Images
Cage previously told EW that his character is “a tragic entity … at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him.” His mother, Joy Vogelsang, reportedly struggled with similar issues for most of his youth — and even endured shock treatments during various institutionalizations.
“I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane?” Cage told EW in June. “It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through. She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry.”
The actor recently shared he’s “terrified” of becoming controlled through the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence, letting Hollywood inhabit his likeness with ease.
Horror fans, meanwhile, are rejoicing — as “Longlegs” sits at a ripe 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film hit theaters nationwide on Friday.