Nicolas Cage: Actors need gun training
Nicolas Cage insisted actors "need to know" how to use guns.
The 57-year-old star believes there's a wide range of skills which "movie stars" need in order to do their jobs properly, including fighting, horse riding, and handling weapons properly, and feels they should be as well trained as their stunt doubles.
Asked about guns in movies in the wake of the tragedy on the set of Alec Baldwin's movie 'Rust' - which saw cinematographer Halyna Hutchins killed and director Joel Souza injured when a weapon the actor was handling discharged a bullet - Nicolas said: "I don't want to cast blame anywhere, but I do think, and I'm not talking about anybody, but people don't like the word movie star. We want to be humble actors.
"But a movie star is a bit of a different kind of presentation because you need to know how to ride a horse. You need to know how to fight. You're going to do fight scenes. You need to know how to ride a motorcycle. You need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars, and you do need to know how to use a gun. You do.
"You need to take the time to know what the procedure is. Those are part of the job profiles.
"Now, the stuntman and the movie star are two jobs that co-exist, they co-exist. Every stuntman needs to be a movie star and every movie star needs to be a stuntman. That's just part of the profile...And that's all I'm gonna say about it."
Fellow actors Peter Dinklage and Andrew Garfield insisted it was a "no brainer" to stop using real guns on set and change is needed in order to prevent another such tragedy.
Speaking during The Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable, Peter said: "That should never happen again. So anything we can do to move away from that, that's our responsibility. Clearly a no brainer."
Andrew added: "Yeah that's kind of a no brainer. Like, if it can be avoided, [it should be]."
The 'Cyrano' actor continued: "And it can be avoided because look at what you can do with movies. You know that also calls into question, are there too many guns in movies? We've all held guns in movies, probably, and I always think about that being anti-gun myself, but the character isn't. That's a very complicated thing. But that made it very clear that there has to be change, like, now. One hundred percent."
