Nicolas Cage Forced To Quit A Favorite Pastime Because Of The Internet
Nicolas Cage blames the internet for ruining his favorite thing!
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Nicolas Cage admitted that he simply can’t pick up the microphone and do one of his favorite things after he got picked apart by the Internet. In 2019, Nicolas Cage was going through a tough time. Like any of us would, he turned to something he finds relaxing and therapeutic. However, Nicolas Cage isn’t like the rest of us — what he finds relaxing and therapeutic just so happens to be doing punk rock covers of classic 1980s songs at karaoke.
Speaking on a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter with fellow actors Peter Dinklage, Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Majors and Simon Rex, Nicolas Cage admitted that he no longer does karaoke after a video (shared by Hollywood Pipeline) of him angrily belting out Prince’s Purple Rain went viral that year and led to him getting lambasted on social media for something he thought would never see the light of day.
Nicolas Cage lamented the fact that he used to consider letting loose and singing songs poorly (otherwise known as karaoke) as something that was therapeutic for him, but only because it was done in a private room with close friends. However, when someone videotaped and leaked him at a bar in Los Angeles’ Koreatown that year, he said the violation of privacy was enough to sour him to the experience for good. Although Andrew Garfield tried to convince the actor not to “steal the gift from the world,” it seems Nicolas Cage is pretty serious about his retirement from karaoke after the embarrassment.
To be fair to the Ghost Rider actor, that time in 2019 was a particularly bad one for him. He had made headlines for a quick marriage to Erika Koike in Las Vegas only to very publicly file for an annulment just four days later. He told the New York Times that he was reluctant to talk about it because he was “pretty upset” about the whole situation. In court, Nicolas Cage claimed that he was too drunk to understand that he was getting married to her and that he was similarly unaware of her preexisting relationship with another person.
So, while he was a bit sore about something going on in his personal life at the time, he ducked into a karaoke bar with friends to belt out some therapeutic Prince only for tabloids like TMZ to pick up the story and speculate that he was blowing off steam due to his failed marriage. While he may very well have been, he certainly didn’t seem keen to have another hugely embarrassing set of headlines drumming up something he was currently upset about at the time.
Being videotaped at karaoke is anyone’s worst nightmare unless you’re one of those horrible people that’s actually a good singer and forces your friends to go to a bar so you can show them up live in front of other people. Nicolas Cage is an actor who isn’t afraid to make himself look silly for roles, in fact, it’s kind of his whole thing. However, it seems the 2019 leaked karaoke video was a bridge too far even for him as it pulled less from his acting talent and more from his personal anguish. Here’s hoping that he gets over it and gets back to his musical therapy someday soon, though.
