The Bizarre Stalkers Nicolas Cage Has Had

Stalkers are one of the occasional harsh realities of fame, and it stands to reason that someone as outlandish and strikingly odd as Nicolas Cage would attract some pretty bizarre stalkers. Starting with his 1982 debut in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, per Biography, Cage has become notorious for his intense, weird performances, his "method" techniques that have included getting teeth pulled and eating a live cockroach in order to best stay in character, and his sometimes strange offscreen behaviors that seem to reflect the often idiosyncratic characters that serve as his trademark roles. 

It's a rare person who has won an Academy Award for his performance as an alcoholic consciously drinking himself to death, as Cage did for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, and played a role so campy and over-the-top that it resulted in a meme in which he screams "NOT THE BEES!" as a cage of bees is put over his head, as seen in the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man. But that rare person is, of course, Nicholas Cage. What kinds of stalkers has he attracted? The oddest possible kinds, naturally. 

In a 2009 interview with Parade, Nicolas Cage was promoting the movie Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans, featuring a typically wild Cage performance in which he attempted "to find a way to play a guy who was high on crack and other illegal substances and at the same time be responsible and not glamorize the drugs or drug-taking but show the hideous effects."

 Speaking of hideous effects, Cage shared with Parade that he'd had an especially disconcerting experience on the set of his 1999 movie Bringing Out The Dead, noting, "I guess it would fall into the stalker category more or less. I was being stalked by a mime — silent but maybe deadly ... 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."

Is a possibly deadly mime more or less disturbing than a naked stranger eating a Fudgesicle? If the stranger appears at the foot of one's bed in the middle of the night, that probably tips the fear scale in the direction of the Fudgesicle. While discussing his 2011 movie Trespass with Reuters, Cage shared his own experience with a home invasion: "It was two in the morning. I was living in Orange County at the time and was asleep with my wife. My two-year old at the time was in another room. I opened my eyes and there was a naked man wearing my leather jacket eating a Fudgesicle in front of my bed. I know it sounds funny but it was horrifying." Cage decided not to press charges, as the man who'd entered his home was mentally ill, but he was unable to stay in his home and relocated to the Bahamas. There's no word on the ultimate fate of the leather jacket.