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Nicolas Cage says he is the one who pushed Johnny Depp into acting
Speaking to Variety, Cage said the two met in their younger years, and Depp was struggling financially when he convinced him to give acting a try
“We were dating the same girl, and he came to L.A. not wanting to like me,” Cage said of Depp
Nicolas Cage says he is the one who pushed Johnny Depp to get into acting.
Cage, 62, spoke to Variety about the actors he came of age with — including Depp, 62.
“We were dating the same girl, and he came to L.A. not wanting to like me,” Cage said of the actor. “He was a guitar player. I liked him right away, and he said, ‘I like Nic… I can’t not like him.’ “
Nicolas Cage, Johnny Depp
Credit: Barry King/WireImage
Cage continued: “We became very good friends, and we were playing Monopoly one day. He was having a very hard time financially — he was selling pens, I believe, and I let him live in my apartment, but then he started stealing my money to buy drinks — and I said, ‘Why don’t you just try acting?’ “
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“And he said, ‘I can’t act.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you can. Why don’t you just go meet with my agent?’ And he met with my agent, and the rest is history. He was an ‘overnight sensation,’ as they say,” the Spider-Noir actor remembered.
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Depp’s first role came in the 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, followed by his breakout television role in 1987, 21 Jump Street, which ran until 1990 and launched him into teen idol status.
In a 2019 interview with The New York Times Magazine, Cage said that the Nightmare on Elm Street role came due to him connecting Depp to his agent.
“He wanted to be a musician at the time, and he told me, ‘No, I can’t act.’ I said, ‘I think you can act.’ So I sent him to meet with my agent,” Cage recalled in that interview. “She sent him out on his first audition, which was A Nightmare on Elm Street. He got the part that day. Overnight sensations don’t happen. But it happened with him.”
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