If you give Nicolas Cage the right part, the man will give you an incredible performance.
Just see Mandy, Adaptation, or Wild at Heart for proof. And don’t forget that Cage won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. On the flip side, he has a really bad habit of picking awful parts and winding up in horrible movies.
For every Joe or Bad Lieutenant, the man has shown up in a dozen cinematic atrocities like Left Behind, Season of the Witch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and of course, the infamous remake of The Wicker Man. Take a look at his filmography, and it’s tempting to think that he’ll just say “yes” to any script that comes along. But believe it or not, Cage actually puts some thought into the parts he picks, which means there are quite a few iconic characters that he’s passed on. From bumbling idiots to sadistic cult leaders, these are the roles that Nicolas Cage actually turned down.
Cage passed on a dumb (and dumber) role
With his frazzled hair and goofy grin, it’s impossible to imagine anybody besides Jeff Daniels playing that lovable Dumb and Dumber doofus Harry Dunne. But as it turns out, Daniels wasn’t the first pick to play Jim Carrey’s sidekick. Speaking with The Huffington Post in 2012, Nicolas Cage revealed that he he used to be good friends with Carrey (evidently, they don’t talk much these days; they just went separate ways), and as he put it, “Well, we talked at length about trying to do a movie together.”
Sure, they both appeared in Peggy Sue Got Married, but the duo wanted to make a film where they were both the leads, acting alongside one another. And Carrey actually had a very specific movie in mind. “In fact,” Cage elaborated, “he wanted me to be in Dumb and Dumber with him.” However, Cage turned down the part of Harry Dunne for Leaving Las Vegas, the film that earned him an Oscar for Best Actor. Still, it’s pretty wild imagining what Cage’s take on the character would’ve been like, and based on his bathroom freakout in Mandy, you know Cage would’ve done something truly crazy with that infamous toilet scene.
