Nick Cage's appearance on Terry Wogan's BBC1 talk show back in 1990 starts with a front handspring and a few kicks and ends with him shirtless. It's a wild ride! What the heck was going on? Who knows! But, earlier this year, he intentionally brought back that younger, more "neurotic" version of himself in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent.
I [also] really responded to the Nicky character, this younger version of myself. They were [initially] talking more about like having the character be like Cameron Poe from Con Air — but that's not me. Look at my appearance on the Wogan show in England when I was promoting Wild at Heart. That guy was an obnoxious, irreverent, arrogant madman. That's the young version of me that I think that I would be confronting as the contemporary Nick Cage.
(Reddit)