Nicolas Cage has revealed that he “could have died” while attempting to surf.
The 62-year-old actor, whose new film “The Surfer” is in theaters now, opened up about his harrowing experience in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying that he has been “pounded to smithereens” many times he’s attempted to surf.
“I’m climbing up the leash as I’m somersaulting, and I could have died,” he recalled of his attempts at the sport. “I just got pounded and literally got stuck in the riptide, and [teachers] said they saw my board, they call it ‘tombstone,’ like that triangle top,” he continued, referencing the tip of his surfboard sticking up out of the water.
Cage added that his surfing days were long gone after having his now 2-year-old daughter August Francesca Coppola with wife Riko Shibata.
“Now, I have a young kid, I don’t know if I want to do it anymore,” he said.
“The Surfer,” directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Thomas Martin, is a psychological thriller centered on Cage’s unnamed character. According to the official synopsis, he returns to the idyllic Australian beach of his childhood to surf with his son.
“But his desire to hit the waves is thwarted by a group of locals whose mantra is, ‘Don’t live here, don’t surf here,'” the synopsis continues, according to People. “Humiliated and angry, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising in concert with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him to his breaking point.”
Commenting on the film’s ending, Nicolas Cage said he “wouldn’t change a frame” but had spoken to director Finnegan about the possibility of him riding waves at the end of “The Surfer.”
“Lorcan and I talked at length about it. He knows that I wish I could have gotten to that point,” Cage said, adding that the paparazzi only captured shots of him wiping off his longboard while training for the film.
“They didn’t get the one shot of me standing on the board,” he said.