Nicolas Cage turned down major roles in the 2002 “Spider-Man” movie and 1994 comedy “Dumb and Dumber” — but has no regrets.
In an interview with Variety published Thursday, Cage confessed that filmmaker Sami Raimi approached him to play supervillain Green Goblin in the blockbuster superhero movie.
“Sam and I had a great lunch, and I did say during the lunch, ‘Listen: whoever plays Spider-Man, let them do one scene where they’re crawling around like a spider when they’re alone,’ and it didn’t happen,” the actor, 62, recalled.
“He wanted me to do the Green Goblin,” Cage continued, referencing Willem Dafoe’s role.
The Oscar winner added, “I liked the idea of Sam Raimi, because of ‘Evil Dead 1’ and ‘2,’ and I wanted to work with him, but I had this other film called ‘Adaptation.’”
Cage said something similar occurred when he was asked to star alongside Jim Carrey in the cult comedy classic.
He chose, instead, to focus on his film “Leaving Las Vegas” — which snagged him the 1996 Academy Award for Best Actor.
“Both those decisions were the right ones for me, and I’m happy with those results,” Cage insisted.
Jeff Daniels, notably, portrayed the role of Harry Dunne alongside Carrey in “Dumb and Dumber.”
Earlier this month, Cage made headlines for revealing several A-list directors won’t work with him due to him turning down their projects.
The Golden Globe winner claimed Christopher Nolan wouldn’t return his calls after he passed on 2002’s “Insomnia,” which starred Al Pacino and the late Robin Williams.
“Most of them, they get their feelings hurt and don’t call you back,” he said in a Q&A with the New York Times last week. “It’s happened a million times to me.”
Aside from Nolan, Cage claimed Paul Thomas Anderson and Woody Allen are also directors that no longer want to work with him after he turned down their projects.
“They don’t call me back,” he said. “The Paul Thomas Anderson movie was a very early movie. He’d shown me a short film with Philip Baker Hall — who was in ‘Hard Eight.’
“We were going to do something and it didn’t work out.”
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