Nicolas Cage has done a lot for the art of cinema, but there is one stunt he will never do again — and that would be eating real-life cockroaches. That’s right. It’s not a prop, and it’s not visual effects, as Cage is actually eating that cockroach in the 1988 vampire comedy film Vampire’s Kiss.
Cage called the experience “the most disgusting horrible memory I have of any experience on a movie set” in an interview with Sunday Morning’s Lee Cowan back in 2014, but he’s reiterated his repulsion since. While talking to Yahoo Entertainment about another vampire comedy called Renfield that he did years later in 2023, Cage said he was sorry he ever ate that roach in the first place.
In fact, he ate two cockroaches, as he told Cowan. Cage and Robert Bierman, the director of Vampire’s Kiss, weren’t the most friendly on set and so the latter had the former repeat the take as a prank. It was the actor’s idea to eat a bug, however. The scene was initially planned with a raw egg, but Cage thought the cockroach would be “punk rock.” He was right. It is, indeed, still being talked about today, and its sheer shock value when Vampire’s Kiss hit theaters placed Cage on the map as a no-holds-barred actor to watch.
“I started at fifteen and I was trying to make a big noise. Say “Look at me, I’m here! And I want you to remember me,'” Cage told Cowan. The movie might have flopped at the time but has since become a cult classic for its eccentric and absurd production, and is remembered as one of Cage’s most iconic performances.
In the DVD commentary for Vampire’s Kiss, Cage said eating the cockroach was “a business decision” for him since he knew the scene would elicit real reactions from those in the audience.