Nicolas Cage Praises Cate Blanchett for Continuing the Tradition of ‘Golden Age’ Acting

Nicolas Cage is applauding Cate Blanchett‘s dedication to the art of acting.

Cage told The New Yorker that Blanchett is among the few stars who truly embodies the “Golden Age vanguard style of film performance” — the style that Cage holds in the highest regard.

“I think that there have been remarkable performances,” Cage said of modern film acting. “I don’t know if it’s new, per se, or a kind of recycling or return to an older style where people are less afraid to express themselves in a larger format. They’re breaking free from ‘If it’s quiet and minimal, it’s great.’ They can liberate themselves and use their voices and gesture and go bigger.”

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He continued, “I’ve seen it in different actors — for me, Cate Blanchett certainly reminds me of the Golden Age vanguard style of film performance as well.”

For the “Longlegs” actor, he prefers when stars maintain a degree of evasiveness onscreen.

“I like people who don’t have irony,” he said. “I like people who aren’t always trying to flex their sarcasm [but] it’s the modern world, and it’s what everyone thinks is the arbiter of intelligence. ‘Oh, you’re sarcastic, so you’re witty, and therefore you’re smart.’ I get it. I can do all the silver-tongue stuff, too — but I like solid, genuine people.”

He added, “I think there’s a limit to it. At a certain point, you’re, like, ‘Oh, I’m onto you. You’re not genuine. You’re just really into yourself and how fast you can be with your comebacks.’ I’ve seen it happen to different actors whose names I won’t mention.”

As for his own career, Cage admitted that he is probably “little anachronistic to the times that we’re in” with his role selection.

“But I also don’t know that the crazy guy or the madman perception that the public may have about me would fit so well into the Golden Age. Unless you’re ‘Top of the world, Ma!’ — Cagney in ‘White Heat.’ They were doing it then. They were all going off a little bit,” he said. “The fantasy would be that I could try to aspire to be something more Golden Age. You know, something more like James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Or Hedy Lamarr or Bette Davis. I wanted to have that kind of aura, you know, like the more enigmatic, you don’t know too much. That’s why I’m not on social media. That’s the thinking, anyway. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens if I do this Amazon show [‘Spider-Man Noir’], and they put me in black-and-white. We’ll see if we can get some of that flavor.”