Nicolas Cage Regrets Nothing About His Years Of VOD Roles (In Fact, They Conquered His Massive Debt)

We all know the story about Nicolas Cage‘s money problems. Lavish spending on castles and dinosaur skulls, which coupled with the 2008 crash and a string of flops, landed him in hot water with the IRS and creditors. To dig himself out, Cage embarked on a marathon film-making run starring in sometimes as many as four VOD movies a year. While Cage himself will readily admit that some of those movies didn’t work, the actor recently revealed that despite claims to the contrary, he “never phoned it in.”

While sitting down for a lengthy profile where he claims to have the “liver of a 13-year-old choir boy,” Cage revealed that his VOD strategy actually worked, and as of last year, he’s now debt-free thanks to his most recent film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Cage also opened up about the circumstances that landed him in financial trouble, and how he refused to file for bankruptcy.

“I’ve got all these creditors and the IRS and I’m spending $20,000 a month trying to keep my mother out of a mental institution, and I can’t. It was just all happening at once,” Cage told GQ:

Cage was adamant that he would never file for bankruptcy, even when people kept telling him to press that button. And he wants to clear up a misconception about the work he took on to prevent that from happening. “When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all,” he says. “They didn’t work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didn’t work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring.”

While Cage’s career seems to be on an upswing, don’t expect to see him in National Treasure 3. When the topic of the third film potentially happening came up, Cage waved it away and called out Disney for being a “fair-weather friend” that left him in the dust after The Sorcerer’s Apprentice flopped.