Nicolas Cage

And I found a way, and the powers that be said okay, to play the part in a way that I thought would be interesting to me.

which was to use this voice that was not considered very attractive and to change my appearance in such a way where it almost became like a cartoon or like a dream cartoon.

I knew full well that that was not going to go over very well, but at the same time, it's what kept me interested.

I knew that I was taking an enormous risk, but...

It was so exciting.

Every day I went to work and I was just saying in my mind, I'm going to

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to stick to it.

I'm going to stick to it.

I'm going to stick to it.

And everyone else around me is like, stop, stop, stop.

And I just kept going.

And I'm very happy with that performance for me.

And I think in time, it's matured in a way that's actually quite wonderful.

And I'm glad I did it.

But in the process, I knew I was going to invite a lot of negative commentary.

It was a personal choice of mine that I was carving something that I wanted to bring to life and have it shine in that way.

Francis Bacon famously said in his book, The Brutality of Fact, that it's impossible to record anything as a fact without causing some injury to the image.

So I was actively looking for, at times, the grotesque, like a Bacon painting.

Vampire's Kiss.