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Hollywood icon Nicolas Cage has revealed his latest film could have killed him during a terrifying stunt.
The Surfer, directed by Lorcan Finnegan, follows Cage as the eponymous Surfer who returns to his hometown by an idyllic Australian beach to purchase his family home.
The beach he loves so dearly is defended from outsiders by a group of local bullies led by Scally (Julian McMahon), who take a dislking to The Surfer and his son, The Kid (Finn Little).
As he desperately tries to close the deal on the house by Christmas, he becomes entangled in escalating conflicts between the town’s eclectic characters.
With a title like The Surfer, you can rest assured the film does indeed include the water sport – and it put the Longlegs star, 61, in a dangerous situation as he entered surfing training for the role.
‘I have surfed, but every time I’ve attempted surfing, I’ve been pounded to smithereens,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter.
‘I surfed down on Sunset Beach. When I was trying to learn, my teacher gave me a shortboard. I said, “Look, I want a longboard.”‘
However, the longboard didn’t help the Pig actor as he ‘just got pounded’ by the waves and ‘got stuck in the rip tide.’
‘They said they saw my board, they call it “tombstone,” like that triangle top. I’m climbing up the leash as I’m somersaulting, and I could have died.’
He added: ‘Now I have a young kid, I don’t know if I want to do it anymore.’
Cage is the father to August Francesca Coppola Cage, 2, whom he shares with wife Riko Shibata, as well as Kal-El Coppola, 19, with Alice Kim, and Weston Cage Coppola, 34, with Christina Fulton.
It comes as another Cage flick has climbed the Netflix charts to become the ninth most-watched film of the week.
Directed by The Crow filmmaker Alex Proyas, Knowing stars Cage as MIT professor John Koestler, who stumbles across a time capsule containing a seemingly prophetic string of numbers.
Discovering that these numbers correlate to major disasters over the past 50 years – including September 11 and Hurricane Katrina – John is quick to notice that the list is almost at an end.
With a devastating solar flare on the horizon, John realises that this impending cataclysm could be the world’s last – and he faces a race against time to get himself and his son (Chandler Canterbury) to safety before it’s too late.
In February, his vampire flick Renfield came to Netflix, which also stars Nicholas Hoult as the titular servant to Cage’s Dracula.
The film follows Renfield as he attempts to extricate himself from life under horror cinema’s most horrible boss.
Aided by cop Rebecca (Awkwafina), Renfield navigates life as a free man for the first time – only to be drawn back into Dracula’s web as the Count seeks to get his former assistant back under his thrall.
The Surfer comes to UK cinemas on May 9
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