Nicolas Cage has revealed the ‘pretty brutal’ regime behind gaining 25lbs to play NFL legend John Madden in a new biopic.
The movie, Madden, follows the life and career of the iconic American football head coach and commentator, who died at the age of 85 in 2021.
Stepping out onto the red carpet for the premiere of the film, alongside wife Riko Shibata, Cage revealed the lengths he went to in order to gain weight for the role.
“I just enjoyed my pasta and my sourdough bread, which I don’t normally do,” the 62-year-old actor told PEOPLE.
“I mean, it’s pretty brutal. Two premier protein shakes and one meal a day. It’s usually a Caesar salad.”
However, Cage did confess that he didn’t feel comfortable gaining any more than 25lbs, opting instead to use prosthetics to add the rest of the weight needed to resemble the legend commentator.
He added: “But with that, I got to enjoy the pasta and then I added — look, I’m 62, so I’m not going to gain 60 pounds. That’s dangerous. But I added the other 30 with [prosthetics].”
Cage worked with prosthetics and makeup artist Adrien Morot, famed for his work with Brendan Fraser for his Academy Award winning performance in The Whale, to create Madden’s signature look.
“It was the same approach, a hybrid approach,” Cage explained. “That was, to me, the sweet spot.”
As it turns out, losing the weight after filming was much more grueling than the process of gaining it in the first place.
When asked if the weight came off easily, Cage said, ‘not really’, adding: “A lot of days in the gym on the elliptical. I still do it. I’m always on the elliptical for a couple of hours a day.”
The actor went on to reveal just how much he learned about Madden while researching his character, explaining: “when I realized that the root of John Madden was his love for life and his high energy and his sense of humor, and that he was a teacher first and foremost, because that was what meant the most to him.”
“When I realized that that is what John was, a teacher first, I grew to love him even more,” he added, noting that his own father was a teacher.
“I knew nothing about him before I started working on the picture. That wasn’t where my interest was. Football was not my interest. Sports was not my interest. But I saw in him an opportunity for transformation of sorts because he was so far out of my comfort zone that I thought, ‘Well, this is a risk and I want to go for it’.”
Cage stars alongside Christian Bale, who plays former Raiders owner Al Davis, who passed away in 2011 aged 82. Meanwhile, Kathryn Hahn plays Madden’s wife, Virginia Fields, while Sienna Miller plays Davis’ wife Carol Sagal.
John Mulaney plays Trip Hawkins, the man who founded Electronic Arts and paved the way for the Madden NFL video game series.
Madden is set to land on Prime Video on November 18.
