Nicolas Cage had drinking coach

Nicolas Cage

ollywood actor Nicolas Cage hired a "drinking coach" to observe for his role as an alcoholic writer in "Leaving Las Vegas". Cage told GQ magazine: "My cousin, Roman Coppola, said, 'You should go, hire Tony Dingman' - who was at that time, very drunk and also a poet - 'Hire him to be your drinking coach.'

"So I had him on the set with me all the time, the poor guy, curled up in a foetal position in my trailer while I played bongos, I was trying to get some rhythm for the character.

"But I would watch him and he'd say the most poetic things, like, 'You do not kick the bar, you lean into the bar because it's not 'Vino Veritas, it's In Vino Veritas', he'd just spout all these things out and I put them in the movie."

Cage, who won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance, said there were some scenes he shot while "completely hammered" because he wanted to be as "credible" as possible, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

He said: "It was a four-week shoot - thank God it was a only four-week shoot - because there were a few scenes where I wanted to be hammered. Because I wanted to be out of control and have them photograph that so I could reach that credibility, that authenticity.

"The scene that comes to mind is the casino scene, where I flipped the table and had a blackout because I didn't know I was going to go there, I just wanted something extraordinary happen and they kept it in the movie."

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