The 20 Best Nicolas Cage Roles, Ranked

Known for gonzo performances, the prolific actor’s movie highlights include ‘Raising Arizona,’ ‘Face/Off,’ and ‘Adaptation.’

What precedent does Hollywood have for someone like Nicolas Cage ? He makes Jack Nicholson look button - up . ( Imagine Cage ’s Jack Torrance . ) America ’s waste player , now 58 , is enjoying a renaissance that adheres to no playbook anyone could have contrive a decade ago . It make for because it makes sense : " Gonzo " has long been the go - to parole to describe Cage ’s performances , and if he is test the demarcation of just how trouble a movie star can be , that trajectory has rootage in early function likeRaising ArizonaandWild at Heart . When he does n’t let promiscuous , his films tend to subside ( see : It Could chance to YouandThe Family Man).He calls his proficiency " nouveau Asian shamanism , " a way to heighten one ’s imaging in order tofeellike a particular character . Now , The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — a hyper - meta rarity that would n’t be potential without the electricity of late projection likeMandyandColor Out of quad — let Nicolas Cage play Nicolas Cage , literally . Almost no one else could pull off a ego - reflexive gambit to such a grade .

In honor of Cage ’s wild and eldritch career , Thrillist is ranking his 20 best performances .

20.Snake Eyes(1998)

work with manager Brian De Palma , fresh off the blockbuster achiever ofMission : Impossible , John Milton Cage Jr. lend an admirable vileness to this rain - soaked , twist - fill criminal offense thriller , which incur him play a tainted cop hurl into the middle of an assassination plot at a boxing match in Atlantic City . Unlike many of his A - list peers , Cage has no problem recreate unlikable heel . David Koepp ’s propulsive handwriting send out Cage yammering through the back door and minute halls of a cassino , the gross labyrinth construction for De Palma to let his tv camera crawl over the walls and ceilings . Does everything in this movie make sense ? No , not exactly . But when the filmmaking is as flashy as Cage ’s tropical - print shirt , you wo n’t heed feeling like you ’re act a rigged biz . — Dan Jackson

19.City of Angels(1998)

If you suppose too hard about it , theCity of Angelspremise is nuts . Angel Seth ( Cage ) fall in love with mortal woman Maggie ( Meg Ryan , very lovable ) and require to become human in club to be with her . Then , with the counseling of another saint ( Dennis Franz ) who became human , he goes through with it . Of naturally it ’s not that mere ; in his backer mannikin , he ca n’t be seen by anyone other than Maggie , he does n’t make out the ways of the macrocosm , or even what foods taste like . Much like every other role on this list , Cage make for his all . And those eyes and pierce stares and heedful secrecy bring animation to something that in truth could have been a disaster . — Kerensa Cadenas

18.Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans(2018)

There ’s no topping Abel Ferrara ’s originalBad Lieutenant , a lacerating portrait of Catholic guilty conscience featuring an all - time - great Harvey Keitel performance as the titular crappy pig . With its CBS procedural - like deed , Bad Lieutenant : Port of Call New Orleanslooks like a cynical attempt to boot a funny ' 90s artifact for a fresh era , transporting the action from NYC to post - Katrina Louisiana . But film director Werner Herzog , prosecute some bizarre tangent ( the common iguana ! ) while play other parts of the hand ’s noir plot comparatively straight , and Cage , plumb the depths of addiction like he did inLeaving Las Vegas , prove to be an irresistible duo . ( It helps that the dead bonkers typeface also include Evan Medes , Jennifer Coolidge , Val Kilmer , Brad Dourif , Shea Whigham , Michael Shannon , and Xzibit ! ) When you think the intact movie might collapse into absurdity , it stumbles onto a consequence of stupefying beauty or destabilizing horror . Cage hold the proceedings together with his personal magnetism , allowing you to wonder at and empathize with the fiber ’s depravity . — DJ

17.Color Out of Space(2019)

If you want to see Nicolas Cage say the word " alpacas " many times , this is the movie for you . An version of an H.P. Lovecraft short tale , Color Out of Spacefinds Cage play a father who land his family to a outback Massachusetts farm , where a shooting star soon lands and bathes everyone in a beautiful regal lighting . The dream of a quiet aliveness raising alpaca soon twist into a nightmare . Cage is relatively moderate in the early departure , stress the pain and frustration of grow older , but the 2d half features some of the worker ’s most gonzo trick . The twitching , the shouting , and the vocal tics all get deployed here , often to with child effect . Even when the motion-picture show flounders in certain passages , struggling against budgetary constraint and tonal repugnance , Cage remain unafraid in his willingness to simply " go there . " — DJ

16.Con Air(1997)

Con Airis simply a banana tree motion picture about a bunch of prisoners who highjack a escape — hence the name " con , " as in " con , " and " aura , " as in " airplane . " Bizarrely , Cage is conjecture to be something of a square man in this motion picture . He is Cameron Poe , a secure hombre , who , after killing a guy who tried to attack his married woman , finds himself as cargo with a bunch of sincerely evil dudes . He then must save the day . And yet Cage does not play it secure . use up on a Southern accent that sound like sand in mouth , Cage is just as wild as all of the bad guys , include John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi . The outre pleasure ofCon Airis that , despite the fact that Cage is speculate to be start the everyman hero , he just ca n’t be boring . — Esther Zuckerman

15.The Rock(1996)

As FBI chemical weapons medical specialist Stanley Godspeeed , Cage play the neurotic dweeb to Sean Connery ’s badass Alcatraz escapee John Mason , who gets enter to kick downstairs back into the notorious island prison after it ’s taken over by a squad of rogue commandos extend by an unhinged Ed Harris . Cage ’s loopy free energy , particularly his willingness to ham it up for the joke and sell the occasional sentimental moments , take him an ideal match for conductor Michael Bay ’s pulverizing , maximalist style . As the fate of the populace hangs in the balance , he pulls off something difficult : maintaining an archness while never sell out the ( obviously silly ) assumption . He ’s perpetrate , perspire bullets as he cover those flaky green globe filled with venomous nerve gas pedal , but he ’s not sensitised to caustic remark , either . — disk jockey

14.Valley Girl(1983)

Fast Times at Ridgemont Highmay officially be Cage ’s first motion-picture show , butValley Girlwas his first major role , and the one that recognize his star magnate . In the adolescent movie , he play Hollywood - establish punk Randy , who falls into a star - cut across - lovers romance with Valley girl Julie ( Deborah Foreman ) . As is often the fount when Cage plays a wild-eyed lead , he walks a okay line of being a bad boy , highly goofy , and also charming — make it no admiration Julie ’s so intrigued by him when he make eyes at her on the beach . Director Martha Coolidge has said she knew from the get - go that the then-18 - year - one-time actor hadit , having been quotedsaying , " I said , ' I want you in the plastic film . I ’m going to make you a maven . ' I ca n’t believe I said that to him , but I did . " Even if it would take a while forValley Girlto develop a cult following , Coolidge could n’t have been more right , and you may certainly trace his moderate - man qualities back to this low teen comedy . — Sadie Bell

13.Bringing Out the Dead(1999)

The union of Martin Scorsese , one of modern American cinema ’s most energizing director , with Nicolas Cage , one of the blind ’s most externally expressive superstar , feels almost too combustible . Can one movie address that much passion and intensiveness ? Perhaps unsurprisingly , bring Out the Dead , a Paul Schrader - penned adaptation of Joe Connelly ’s 1998 novel about a New York City paramedical , features a relatively moderate Cage public presentation . His eccentric , Frank , is a classic Shcrader antihero , a humanity fighting through an experiential crisis and recoiling at the depraved world around him . Bleary - eyed and hollowed - out , batting cage serve as a not bad foil for locked - in turns from Ving Rhames , John Goodman , and Tom Sizemore as his fellow Nox - owl paramedics , and the picture show HUM with a searching horse sense of role , playing like a spiritual subsequence toTaxi Driver , Scorsese and Schrader ’s other Manhattan parable of life observed from behind a windshield . — disc jockey

12.Vampire’s Kiss(1989)

11.Matchstick Men(2003)

A yr afterAdaptation , Cage was back in jittery mode for Ridley Scott’sMatchstick Men . play Roy Waller , an OCD con adult male , coop lean heavy into tics , his anxious movement becoming as much a cloth of the scenes as Scott ’s washed - out lighting . But he snaps into focus when he ’s on the job , and it ’s the wave-particle duality of that oeuvre that makes Cage so special . Combine all of that with the manner he bounces off Alison Lohman as Angela , Roy ’s teenager daughter who appear out of the drear and crashes his life . It ’s another one of those performances that manages to mix Cage ’s wild impulses with true fragrance . — EZ

10.Mandy(2018)

If you were to put a finger on when Cage begin to make a " comeback " in the popular refinement , that finger’s breadth would probably land onMandy , Panos Cosmatos ' artwork house sci - fi / fantasy / revulsion where Nic Cage play a unbeloved quite a little military personnel dead - set on avenging his girlfriend ’s execution by violently down the phallus of a demonic biker gang . finely scored by the synth - hard tones of the recent Jóhann Jóhannsson , lit in atomic number 10 shades of red and green , and bookended by gorgeous heavy metallic element - exalt title cards , the movie is a spread for the eye and ear . But Cage ’s considered performance perfectly balances his ability to tap into both interior and exterior emotional extremes while covered in blood and squall one moment and silently driving down lonely mint roadstead the next . Mandyis an immediate standout that reminds us what great acting can reach . — ES

9.Peggy Sue Got Married(1986)

John Milton Cage Jr. ’s third movie with his uncle Francis Ford Coppola , Peggy Sue Got Marriedis Kathleen Turner ’s show — and yet it would n’t be the same without Cage ’s floppy - haired himbo magnetic force . In present - day sequence , he ’s a philandering sleaze . But when Turner ’s titular character is transported back to 1960 , her senior year of eminent school , when she was dating a untried Cage , he morph into a groovy narcissist of a teenager , dying to launch the music life history he gives up after Peggy Sue becomes significant . He has the performative confidence of someone whose whole life story is ahead of him , but it ’s the ball of nerves hide beneath the airfoil that makes Cage ’s performance so riotous . Turner did n’t savour work with Cage , but this sweetened drollery about marriage and the passage of metre overcomes whatever antics he got into during the yield . — Matthew Jacobs

8.National Treasure(2004)

As American account - obsessed gem hunting watch Benjamin Franklin Gates , Cage plays a character type he ’s never attempted before or since : a sort of modernistic Indiana Jones venturer who is both nerdy and a little fleck dashing , be given from unsound guys and leaping across ceiling and down into centuries - old catacombs like a Revolutionary War LARPing Jason Bourne . National Treasureand its continuation dead captivate Cage ’s ability to flux rage with dry wittiness , kid with his buddies while never straying from his ultimate object , and delivering lines like " I ’m go to slip the Declaration of Independence " with firm lordliness . We would n’t trust our nation ’s most important secrets in anyone else ’s hands . — atomic number 99

7.Leaving Las Vegas(1995)

The only role that has succeed Cage an Oscar — though he was also nominated forAdaptation — is one where you ca n’t really guess another individual attempting it , let alone plough in a execution that ’s even a fraction of what the actor accomplish as suicidal alcoholic Ben Sanderson in the celluloid , which Mike Figgis write , directed , and scored . Leaving behind a tainted screenwriting career in Los Angeles with the goal of drinking himself to the grave , Ben receive Sera ( Elizabeth Shue ) , a callous Las Vegas sex worker who becomes his lover , caretaker , and holy person of end in his forcible diminution , so violently in withdrawal that he wake up shaking in the midsection of the nighttime and is ineffective to eat even a forkful of Elmer Leopold Rice . To search the role , Cage take a drinking handler , orgy - drink and filmed it to watch the footage , and fritter some of his scenes inebriated for genuineness , translate to a haunting , from time to time darkly funny , and wild depiction of a valet sunk so far into his own addiction that he ’s set to escape with only way out.—Leanne Butkovic

6.Pig(2021)

What is probably the most " normal " role for Cage on this whole list is also one of his very unspoiled . InPig , he ’s Robin Feld , a once - celebrated Portland - arena chef who traded his famous person for a reclusive animation in the riotous Oregon Natalie Wood to trace for truffles with his beloved and beautiful pig . One day she ’s stolen and , chauffeured around by his objectionable truffle dealer ( Alex Wolff ) , he embark on a John Wick - ian quest to find out where she is , who took her , and why that plunge him back into the Portland intellectual nourishment conniption . Though Robin is a man of few word , Cage ’s sedate , measured performance does just as much , if not more , than if he were thrash around crazily . Slow and deliberate cause , enured glances , and restrained dialog are all he need here to turn in a wallop.—LB

5.Face/Off(1997)

When a guy slip your face and voice to take on your identity and convince your brother to uncover the localisation of a turkey set to go off somewhere in the middle of Los Angeles , there ’s only one affair you’re able to do : slip HIS face and go on a murderous violent disorder hunting him down ! The plot ofFace / Off , John Woo ’s gonzo blockbuster activity movie , sounds like it was daydream up by a bunch of kid who had partaken a little too heavy in a few too many substances , but , boy , does it work out , thanks mainly to Cage ( as criminal originator Castor Troy and fearless FBI Agent Sean Archer ) and his carbon monoxide gas - principal John Travolta ( as fearless FBI Agent Sean Archer and vicious mastermind Castor Troy ) , both showcasing the height of their acting chops by playing themselves and each other at the same meter . — ES

4.Wild at Heart(1990)

idle at Heartopens with Cage warding off a hit man hired by his girlfriend ’s mother ( Diane Ladd ) and ends with him navigate into the sundown alongside aver lady friend ( a truly gaga Laura Dern ) . What happens in between is David Lynch ’s lopsided twist onThe Wizard of Oz , a thrilling dark drollery track the ghoulishness of American culture . As the magnificently cite Sailor Ripley , Cage sports a decadent snakeskin jacket , imitate Elvis in a bar , and hallucinates a vision of Glinda the Good Witch . He is , unsurprisingly , an ideal match for Lynch ’s spiked cocktail . Cage had already proven his comedic bona fides withPeggy Sue Got MarriedandRaising Arizona , butWild at Heartpreviewed the increasingly outré work that would come in to define his bequest . — MJ

3.Raising Arizona(1987)

It ’s voiceless to reckon any other actor as H.I. " Hi " McDunnough , Cage ’s public toilet - memory board - robbing office in his only collaborationism with theCoen brother . Despite his quirky lingo , twangy dialect , and cartoonish mannerisms , the human being makes youbelievethe character is as real as ever . Although he ’s done comedic study throughout his career , this madcap farce best illustrate what he can attain as a funnyman — whether he ’s fumbling through holdups with pantyhose on his face , confront the insurmountable physical job of brawl a baby from his crib , or navigating a godforsaken cable car chase . Even amid all the Coen - esque silliness , he brings a Huggies value - gang - sized heap of earnestness to his family relationship with Holly Hunter ’s Ed that grounds the exorbitant plot . John Milton Cage Jr. may have become synonymous with gonzo performances in his career , butRaising Arizonais the movie that showcases just how buffoonish his sense of wittiness is . It ’s the kind of performance you wish happened more than once in a lifetime . — SB

2.Adaptation(2002)

Casting an occasionally over - the - top performer like Nicolas Cage as real - life history screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his fabricated twin brother Donald Kaufman , who partake a writing credit on the movie ’s actual script , might have been one too many stunts for this stunt - filled meta drollery , an adaption of Susan Orlean ’s acclaimed nonfiction bookThe Orchid Thief , to handle . But Cage , like director Spike Jonze , elegantly underplays the high - construct cloth , finding the humanity and emotion in what could have been a purely intellectual exercise . His " Charlie " is self - loathing and neurotic , but Cage also highlights his curiosity and sensitivity . likewise , his " Donald , " a Robert McKee disciple with unearned confidence and goofball bravado , also has a genuine heat . Through a series of little physical choices in posture , Cage creates two distinct characters who antagonize and give off each other , embodying the tricky creative reconciliation act that make this quasi - confessional portrayal of an artist combat his inner literary hack so pleasingly bonkers . — disk jockey

1.Moonstruck(1987)

Is a expectant Nicolas Cage performance something that meet his sick bombasity with ruth ? If so , thenMoonstruckis his ideal . He enrol the pic gleam with sweat from the oven where he bakes simoleons . His hair is tousled . His chest fuzz peeks out from under his wifebeater . In this intromission , he gives you everything you need to know about this character , Ronny Cammareri : He ’s unregenerate , striking , and angry . Ronny blames his brother Johnny ( Danny Aiello ) , who is about to get married Loretta Castorini ( Cher ) , for the loss of his mitt and his bride . It ’s a grudge he reject to give up , but he does chop-chop fall in love with Loretta , complicating everything . In the following scene , when Loretta shout out him a wolf , you believe it in the way he jab at his steak . But it ’s also his earnestness that carries the movie . Cage is so actual in all of his Passion of Christ that you consider how easy Loretta can screw up up her life for Ronny . Hades , we would too . — EZ

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