Who’s tougher to imitate: John Travolta or Nicolas Cage? It’s a question that has vexed humanity through the ages, but now we have a clear answer once and for all, from Travolta himself. The actors had to mimic one another in 1997’s Face/Off, and Travolta tells Variety it was not an equal workload.
“Nic is very stylized in his personality, there’s a voice and a cadence and a walk that’s easy to hold onto, which I could imitate very easily,†he remembers. But Cage had a steeper hill to climb. “Nic said, ‘I can’t find you in any of these movies, I don’t know who you are. There’s just all these characters,’ †Travolta says.
“Eventually he said, ‘Tell me if I’m on to something, but I took a little bit of you in Phenomenon, and a little bit of Look Who’s Talking, and I think that’s basically who you are.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty close. That’s accurate enough.’ But it was much easier for me than it was for him.â€
Mystery solved!