Nicolas Cage shares why he failed to learn to surf for ‘The Surfer’

Nicolas Cage tried and tried to master surfing, but something always got in the way.

In his new film The Surfer, Cage plays a businessman who returns home to buy back the beach house he grew up in.

Due to the plot of the film, Cage does little surfing on screen. But that didn’t stop him from trying to master the skill.

“Lorcan and I talked at length about it. He knows that I wish I could have gotten to that point,” Cage told Entertainment Weekly of his discussions with director Lorcan Finnegan.

Cage joked that paparazzi only got shots of him struggling to stay afloat.

“They didn’t get the one shot of me standing on the board,” he quipped

During the limited time he had to learn surfing, he was also hindered by natural roadblocks.

“We had things like weather conditions and believe it or not, shark reports and things, all that s—,” the Ghost Rider star said.

He went on to admit that he couldn’t successfully stay on the surfing board.

“I have surfed, but every time I’ve attempted surfing, I’ve been pounded to smithereens,” he shared with a laugh. “I surfed down on Sunset Beach. When I was trying to learn, my teacher gave me a shortboard. I said, ‘Look, I want a long board.'”

“I just got pounded and literally got stuck in the rip tide, and they said they saw my board, they call it ‘tombstone,’ like that triangle top,” he says, pantomiming the tip of his board sticking straight up out of the water.

“I’m climbing up the leash as I’m somersaulting, and I could have died,” he continued. “Now I have a young kid, I don’t know if I want to do it anymore.”

However, “The goal,” Nicolas Cage said, “is to retire, surf, drink red wine, and eat spaghetti.”