Nicolas Cage is changing his tune when it comes to spending nights out on the town.
After a video of the “National Treasure” star screeching Prince’s “Purple Rain” into the mic at a karaoke bar hit the tabloids earlier this year, Cage decided it would be best if he just stayed home from now on.
“You go to a karaoke bar with a male friend in the neighborhood, the bar says ‘no videotaping’ and suddenly, there’s two different videos of you doing karaoke,” he said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine. “Who did that? Who exposed the videotape? Who sold it?”
The 55-year-old star explained that his viral performance was “more like a primal-scream therapy” session that he didn’t want to become a viral moment, since it was right around the anniversary of Prince’s death.
“It was a holiday weekend, and I didn’t want to go anywhere, but my friend who was with me said: ‘You can’t sit here in your apartment. You’ve got to go out.’ So I went to the one place in my neighborhood that I knew had no video recording, just to have some fun, and that became everybody’s business.”
Cage said that nowadays, he prefers to stay out of the spotlight and focus on his acting career.
“At this point in my life … I heavily prefer to not go out. I’d rather just stay at home,” he said. “I don’t think I can decompress ever again, even at a karaoke bar. It’s too vulnerable. I’m not trying to complain. It’s a fact of life that I have to accept. I’d much rather let my work and not my personal life speak for me.”
But how does the “Leaving Las Vegas” star deal with the downside of fame? Definitely not with therapy, he revealed.
“I haven’t been in any kind of analysis for at least 20 years,” he said. “The times that I’ve done it, there were some benefits. It’s kind of like writing in a diary. You get things out.”
Ultimately, Cage found that he didn’t want to be baring his soul to a perfect stranger.
“Inevitably, there was a point where I’d look at the person and I’d start to go: ‘Why am I talking to you? I’m more interesting than you.’ Then I’d get up and walk out. So I stopped going.”
The actor, who recently made headlines after marrying his girlfriend in Vegas only to break it off four days later, often finds himself embroiled in one scandal after another.