Nicolas Cage was never paid for his Oscar role

Nicolas Cage was never paid for his Oscar role

At the beginning of his career, Nicolas Cage was known for loose, sometimes comedic roles. This was to change fundamentally with Leaving Las Vegas – Love Till Death – a film for which the actor received an Oscar for the first time. However, he was not paid for this role.

Nicolas Cage received the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas – but no fee for it

As the site Screenrant reports, it should Changing Nicolas Cage’s career foreverafter playing the male lead in the drama Leaving Las Vegas took over. The film by Mike Figgis is about unsuccessful screenwriter Ben Sanderson, who has lost his job and his family.

Ben goes to Las Vegas with the aim of drinking himself to death. On the way there he meets the sex worker Sera (Elizabeth Shue) and a relationship develops between the two.

In the podcast It Happened in Hollywood, Mike Figgis revealed in October 2022 that he was involved in Leaving Las Vegas – Love Until Death financially successful for neither Nicolas Cage nor Figgis
was.

The responsible studio, Lumiere Pictures, had promised both Nicolas Cage and Mike Figgis $100,000 – which they never received.

After that, Cage earned 20 million per film

Nevertheless, Leaving Las Vegas represented a breakthrough for both artists. After all, Nicolas Cage won the Best Male Actor category for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas with the Oscar excellent.

Looking back, Mike Figgis struck a conciliatory tone:

However. I mean, my career then took off again and the next film I did paid really well. And earned within a year [Nic] $20 million per movie, so that was pretty good.

Nicolas Cage’s next film project was The Rock. In Michael Bay’s action thriller, Cage plays chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed, who is supposed to help prevent a poison gas attack on San Francisco.

In this way, Nicolas Cage’s performance in Leaving Las Vegas contributed to him receiving more varied role offers from then on, for which he also paid became.

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