Nicolas Cage breaks his silence on why he prefers ‘thespian’ over actor

Nicolas Cage has revealed why he prefers the term “thespian” to “actor”.

The Mandy star recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his forthcoming horror-comedy Renfield.

Stephen asked Nicolas to elaborate on the reason behind calling himself “thespian” as opposed to “actor”.

Nicolas however clarified that he never told people not to refer to him as an actor.

“OK, that’s a great thing you brought that up. What I was saying was, of course you can call me an actor. By the way, I never said, ‘Don’t call me an actor. Call me a thespian,’” he stated.

Nicolas continued, “That’s what clickbait universe was putting out there and somehow got picked up by CNN. I’m not sure how it got picked up by CNN – I’m sure they have more important things to report on.”

The Joe actor explained, “I see acting as storytelling and what it is trying to get to the truth of a character and the first actor in Europe was someone called Thespus and what happened there in Greece was that he broke free from the chorus and started narrating and started telling a story truthfully.

“So, to me, acting is trying to find the truth of a story,” remarked Nicolas.

The Bringing Out the Dead actor added, “Now what’s interesting, literally the word ‘actor’ in Greek means ‘hypocrite’. Well, I don’t want to be thought of as a hypocrite. I’m sorry if that sounds pretentious.”