Why We Love Nicolas Cage's Longlegs Performance (And Why The Haters Are Wrong)

Spoilers for "Longlegs" follow.

It seems to happen like a clockwork. A new Nicolas Cage movie will arrive, and with it comes a question: "Is Nicolas Cage a good actor?" Cage has been working for decades now, but at some point, some folks got it in their heads that the off-kilter performer was bad at his job. To be fair, this could have something to do with the quality of the films he appears in. Cage once got himself in trouble with the IRS — he made lavish purchases (including buying a dinosaur skull that turned out to be stolen), and according to CNBC, ended up owing the IRS "$6.3 million in property taxes."

To offset his financial woes, Cage began working — a lot. He would seemingly take any job thrown his way, and as a result, he appeared in a lot of direct-to-video stinkers. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every single acting role from Nicolas Cage is a bonafide classic. For instance, I doubt that anyone would say he gives a tour de force performance in the boring religious thriller "Left Behind," which has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. But a few misfires do not a bad actor make. Can Cage seem bored in roles? Sure. But look at the man's long career. How can anyone watch him in, say, "Moonstruck," playing one-handed baker Ronny, and think, "This guy isn't good." 

Now, you might be saying, "Well, 'Moonstruck' was almost 40 years ago!" Fair enough! But Cage has a host of great recent performances to his name, too. He's shockingly quiet and reserved in David Gordon Green's criminally underseen "Joe," released in 2013. He's a revelation as the vengeance-driven Red Miller in the psychedelic horror movie "Mandy," from 2018. He gives what might be the very best performance of his career in 2021's beautiful, haunting drama "Pig." And just last year, he earned acclaim as a nebbish professor who haunts everyone's dreams in "Dream Scenario." The latest bit of Cagery has just arrived in theaters in the form of the horror hit "Longlegs," and the question has arisen yet again: is Nicolas Cage a good actor? 

I'm ashamed to admit that I still frequent Twitter (or X, as some buffoons call it), even though it's a rather rotten place and a shadow of its former self. Occasionally, a particularly garish opinion will cross my feed. With Cage back on the big screen in "Longlegs," several folks have been weighing in on Cage as an actor. I won't link to anyone specifically, because I'm not here to put anyone on blast, but there's a subset of individuals who have come to the conclusion that Cage is a bad actor and people only like him in an ironic, detached way. "We don't admire Nic Cage," these folks are claiming. "We just want to laugh at him!" 

I'm sure, for some people, this is true. These individuals think of Cage as little more than a meme; the guy who once declared he would steal the Declaration of Independence in "National Treasure." But this is a wrongheaded approach to Cage as a performer. To be fair, Cage is not a normal actor. He doesn't approach roles in a simple way. Cage himself has compared his approach to acting as being a mix of "nouveau shamanic and Western Kabuki." But what the hell does that mean?

"Nouveau shamanic is nothing other than trying to augment your imagination to get to the performance without feeling like you're faking it," Cage explained to The New York Times. "This author Brian Bates wrote a book called 'The Way of Wyrd,' and he put forth the notion that actors hailed from the old shamans. So I was kind of making a statement about that, and I added 'nouveau' to be fancy." 

Ethan Hawke, who appeared alongside Cage in "Lord of War," is quoted as saying Cage is "the only actor since Marlon Brando that's actually done anything new with the art of acting." And the late, great Roger Ebert perhaps summed up Cage's work best, writing, "He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air. No one else can project inner trembling so effectively ... He always seems so earnest. However improbable his character, he never winks at the audience. He is committed to the character with every atom and plays him as if he were him." 

But what of "Longlegs"? Just what, exactly, is Cage doing in that movie? And is his work there any good? 

The brilliant marketing for "Longlegs" kept Cage a mystery. The many trailers for the film deliberately obscured his visage, and this approach actually carries over into the first scene of the film. Shot in 4:3 academy ratio and made to resemble someone's old home movies, the unnerving opening of "Longlegs" sees a little girl (Lauren Acala) leave her house on a snowy day, curious about a strange car parked at the end of the driveway. The driver of the car makes soon his presence known ... sort of.

Director Osgood Perkins shoots the strange man first at a distance. When he finally approaches the girl, the camera angle remains low — as if it were the child's perspective. We only see the chin of the man, and it's clear there's something off about him. His skin is pale white and his features are rubbery, as if he's wearing a mask. The man speaks in a strange falsetto voice, and then dips his full head into frame. We catch a quick glimpse of it, accompanied by screaming music that then quickly gives way to the opening credits. 

This is Longlegs, a Satanic serial killer played by Cage in all his nouveau shamanic glory. Cage's role in the film is actually somewhat small — he only pops up here and there, and exits the narrative after bashing his face into a table. But he makes every single moment count. This is a deliberately weird performance — Cage seems to be striving to make Longlegs as bizarre as he possibly can. He's aided by ghoulish makeup that's meant to play up the fact that he's addicted to plastic surgery. "His jam is really that he's trying to make himself beautiful for the Devil," special makeup effects artist Harlow MacFarlane told Polygon. "He's in love with the Devil, and he's trying to impress the Devil, so he's gone through all these plastic surgery botch jobs to make himself look as pretty as he can for the Devil." 

But the makeup is just window dressing; it's not the whole performance. What is Cage doing here? For one thing, the actor took an androgynous approach to the role. "I see Longlegs as neither male nor female," Cage told Entertainment Weekly. He added to Fangoria (via IndieWire): "I was thinking about the androgynous prophet in Fellini's 'Juliet of the Spirits,' and the prophet was going, 'Do you think I'm beautiful?' [Osgood Perkins] told me to sort of plump my hair. So I did that, and then I started saying to Maika [Monroe, the lead of 'Longlegs'], 'Do you find me beautiful?'" 

Longlegs is flirty, playful even (his final onscreen moment has him blowing us a kiss). But he also remains a mystery. Who is he? What makes him tick? Is it simply his devotion to Satanic forces? In the world of "Longlegs," Satan is very real, and Longlegs, who is skilled at making creepy dolls that have the power to possess people, is his servant. This lends a touch of the supernatural to Longlegs — and yet, he's also a flesh and blood man. He can be killed. In fact, dying seems to be part of his plan. "He's as shabby and sh***y and ugly and pathetic as possible, and that was just meant to make him a human being, just a person, not a monster," Perkins told IndieWire.

But we can never really know Longlegs. And that's a feature, not a bug — the mystery of it all is part of what makes the film so damn unsettling. And that's what Cage is leaning into — the fun of how vague the character ultimately is. 

There are little clues here and there that hint at Longlegs' personality — he's obsessed with glam rock, for instance. These tidbits enable Cage to build a character that remains deliberately enigmatic. Beyond that, Cage seems to be having a lot of fun here, especially with how excessive the character can be. Longlegs is not a quiet guy. After his initial introduction, using a childish, sing-songy voice, the character is more prone to loud outbursts. He screams, he shrieks, he giggles. And yes, it's a bit over-the-top.

But that's part of the fun. There are a million different ways Cage could've played the character, but it's worth noting that the actor is working exactly with what he's given. "I don't write scripts and be like, 'Oh, it's kind of going to be like this. We'll figure it out later. Nic, just make it all up. I trust you,'" Perkins told Deadline. "Everything is written, so everything that Nicolas Cage says as Longlegs is written in the script when he gets it." Perkins clearly didn't want something subtle for this character. The director added, "And Nic is just as pro as it gets ... He's extremely intelligent and so quick. He doesn't miss anything. And so, it's like using a really sharp knife to cut something. You thank your good luck that you've got such an unbelievable collaborator, and you just start building the thing." 

As a character, Longlegs is meant to disturb and confound. A big theme of the movie is that the main character, FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), can't figure out how Longlegs is doing what he's doing: inspiring fathers to kill their entire families before dying by suicide. The mystery of Longlegs and his ways is what makes the character scary to begin with. We may laugh at how Cage handles the role, but it's uneasy laughter. I saw the film in a sold-out theater, and I could feel the discomfort in the room as Cage screamed "MOMMY!! DADDY!!!" at the top of his lungs while driving a car at full speed. 

Scary outbursts like this are abnormal, and that abnormality is part of what makes the performance so memorable. It's also the type of performance only Cage can deliver — can you honestly picture anyone else in this role? As Roger Ebert put it, Cage is crawling out on a limb, sawing it off and remaining suspended in air. Still, I have no doubt some will see this as little more than another meme-worthy role from Cage; something to snicker at. But I think Cage knows exactly what he's doing here. Like Nicolas Cage, Longlegs seems to love his job, and he's having fun doing it. 

We spoke about this on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below: