Nicolas Cage makes a career comeback in the indie drama ‘Joe’

HE’S one of the most mocked stars in Hollywood but his latest flick has the potential to make Nicolas Cage a serious actor again. See the trailer for Joe.

A CAREER in Hollywood is always an up-and-down proposition. One day you’re winning the Oscar, the next you’re starring in a straight-to-video flick.

Nicolas Cage is one of those actors who started his career strong but of late has become a punch line, appearing in a string of crappy action flicks, such as 2012s Stolen.

But on Friday (in the US), what would appear to be his bid for respectability arrives in the form of Joe. The 50-year-old is already getting some of the best reviews of his recent career for playing a grizzled ex-con who befriends a teen boy (Tye Sheridan) with an abusive father (Gary Poulter).

Seeing Cage in a spare indie drama will shock those who are used to watching the actor in nothing but films that look like ones John Cena turned down.

Nicolas Cage hung out with Australia’s own Teresa Palmer to promote “The Sorcerer's Apprentice”.

Over the past 15 years or so, he has earned the rep of being a paycheck actor: Andy Samberg’s Saturday Night Live impersonation of Cage mainly consisted of the punch line “How am I not in that movie?!”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As Michael Caine once said of his own movie Jaws: The Revenge, “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Cage, who won an Oscar for 1995s Leaving Las Vegas, says he doesn’t chase awards or money. He signs up for movies, including those in the fantasy, horror and sci-fi arenas, because he’s a fan of those genres and they allow him to turn in a more “avant-garde” performance.

He agreed to do the 2011 bomb Drive Angry simply because he thought it was cool that his character would get shot in the eye.

Read more at the New York Post.