Nicolas Cage turned down major roles in the 2002 film Spider-Man and the 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber, but he has no regrets.
In an interview with Variety magazine published Thursday, Cage revealed that he was approached by filmmaker Sami Raimi to play the supervillain Green Goblin in the blockbuster superhero movie.
“Sam and I had a great lunch, and during lunch I said, ‘Listen, I want whoever plays Spider-Man to just do one scene where he crawls like a spider when he’s alone,'” the 62-year-old actor recalled.
“He wanted me to play ‘The Green Goblin,'” Cage continued, referring to Willem Dafoe’s role.
The Oscar winner further added, “I liked the idea of Sam Raimi because of ‘Evil Dead 1 and 2,’ so I wanted to work with him, but he had another movie called ‘Adaptation.’
Cage said something similar happened when he was asked to co-star with Jim Carrey in the cult comedy classic.
Instead, he chose to focus on Leaving Las Vegas, the film that won him the 1996 Academy Award for Best Actor.
“Both decisions were the right ones for me and I’m happy with the outcome,” Cage insisted.
Jeff Daniels, in particular, played the role of Harry Dunne alongside Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.
Earlier this month, Cage made headlines when he revealed that several A-list directors would no longer work with him after he turned down projects.
The Golden Globe winner claimed that director Christopher Nolan did not return his phone calls after he dropped his role in the 2002 film Insomnia, starring Al Pacino and the late Robin Williams.
“Most of them get offended and don’t call back,” he said in a Q&A with The New York Times last week. “It’s happened to me a million times.”
In addition to Nolan, Cage also claimed that Paul Thomas Anderson and Woody Allen were directors he no longer wanted to work with after Nolan turned down the project.
“They don’t call me back,” he said. “Paul Thomas Anderson’s films were very early films. He showed me a short film with Philip Baker Hall, who was in ‘Hard Eight.’
“We were trying to do something, but it didn’t work out.”
