Nicolas Cage Says His First Memory Is From Inside His Mother’s Womb

Nicolas Cage recalled a very early life experience during a recent interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. As part of a clip released on Tuesday, the actor participated in a round of “Questionert” (pronounced “Questionnaire”). The actor entertained the audience with a memory from his childhood related to his parents’ house. “Let me think. Listen, I know this sounds really far out, and I don’t know if it’s real or not, but sometimes I think I can go all the way back to in utero and feeling like I could see faces in the dark or something,” Cage, 59, explained to Colbert, 58.

“I know that sounds powerfully abstract,” he continued, “but that somehow seems like it maybe happened. Now that I am no longer in utero, I would have to imagine it was perhaps vocal vibrations resonating through to me at that stage.”

Deliberating further, Cage added, “That’s going way back. I don’t know. That comes to mind… I don’t even know if I remember being in utero, but that thought has crossed my mind.”

During the interview with Colbert, Cage was also at his best when asked about his opinions on the afterlife. “Oh, wow. Nobody really knows, I don’t know,” Cage said. “They say that electricity is forever eternal. That the spark keeps going. I like to think whatever spark is animating our bodies, once the body passes on, that the spark continues to go. But whether or not that electricity has consciousness or not, who can really say?” Other notable Cage responses include the actor’s interview with Yahoo! Entertainment about his vampire comedy-horror film Renfield with costar Nicholas Hoult. In 1988, the iconic actor recalled consuming live cockroaches when filming a scene for the cult film Vampire’s Kiss.”Oh yeah, I ate it twice because the director did it just to prank me,” Cage remarked to 33-year-old Hoult after being asked whether or not he had given his costar any advice on eating bugs during the filming of Renfield. 

Last week, 60 Minutes had the opportunity to sit down with Cage at his Las Vegas residence, and they came away with plenty of interesting facts about the actor. Cage even revealed he has an African crow and a black dragon lizard in his house. The Adaptation star said it’s “like having a real dinosaur in your house.” The actor also discussed the dark period he went through when he ran into financial difficulties and admitted that while some of his paycheck films weren’t very good, he’s never caught “phoning it in.”

“Even if the movie is ultimately crummy, they know I’m not phoning it in. That I care every time, but there are those folks that are probably thinking the only good acting I can do is the acting that I chose to do by design, which was more operatic and larger than life and so called ‘Cage rage,’ but you’re not going to get that every time,” the famous actor revealed.