Trivia: Nicolas Cage Almost Played Aragorn in THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Here's a piece of movie trivia I'd never heard before: Nicolas Cage apparently turned down the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings trilogy.
Cage revealed the information an interview with Newsweek:
Are there any roles that you've down in your career that you regret turning down?
I don't really have any regrets. I think regret is a waste of time. I try to always move forward as opposed to dwelling on the past or the movies that might have happened. There certainly were movies that I probably would have benefited from if circumstances in my life allowed me to make them.
Any particular ones that come to mind?
Lord of the Rings. That trilogy. Aragorn. Or The Matrix. But the thing is about those movies, I can watch them. I can enjoy them as an audience member. I don't really watch my own movies. And so I genuinely do have the joy of watching these—especially with Lord of the Rings.
Were you offered a role in that?
Yeah.... There were different things going on in my life at the time that precluded me from being able to travel and be away from home for three years. And I do mean it. I get to enjoy the movies as an audience member, because I don't watch my own movies.
The idea of actors who were almost cast in iconic movies has always been fascinating to me because it provides movie fans with a "what if" scenario to debate not only whether that version of the film would have been better than the real one, but how that person's presence might have affected the careers of everyone involved moving forward. Which version of Cage would we have seen? The Oscar-winning actor, or the one willing to embrace insanity in movies like The Wicker Man and Vampire's Kiss? We'll never know, but it'll be a fun conversation for movie geeks to have.
Jackson initially wanted Daniel Day-Lewis or Russell Crowe to play the part, but ended up casting Stuart Townsend as Aragorn and shooting for four days with him before recasting Viggo Mortensen because Townsend was too young. I just rewatched the LOTR trilogy in the past week, and I can't imagine Cage having the same sense of mystique, physicality, and sensitivity that Mortensen brought to that role.
My wife, who was (and is) a huge fan of Mortensen as Aragorn, reacted like this when I told her this news:
What do you think? Could Cage have been a convincing Aragorn?
(Header image from Lord of the Cage, a Tumblr page you should definitely check out if you found any of this amusing.)