You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.

I care about the connection with the audience. Film is such a powerful medium. Movies can change the way people think.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I’m 51 going on 52, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance.

My best takes are my first two takes.

At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.

I guess it would fall into the stalker category more or less. I was being stalked by a mime - silent but maybe deadly. Somehow, this mime would appear on the set of 'Bringing Out the Dead' and start doing strange things. I have no idea how it got past security. Finally, the producers took some action and I haven't seen the mime since. But it was definitely unsettling.