Nicolas Cage has revealed that he was accepted onto a dating show at the age of 14, but his dad prevented him from being involved.

The actor said in a recent interview with the New Yorker that he did his first ever audition for The Dating Game, a primetime game show in the US in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he was successful.

“I got it,” he said. “But my dad wouldn’t let me do it. I was too young. I was, like, 14. My audition tape is out there somewhere.”

Cage’s father was August Coppola, an academic and film executive and the brother of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. August Coppola passed away in 2009 at the age of 75.

Cage is currently starring in the critically acclaimed horror film Longlegs, in which he plays a satanic serial killer who is thought to be connected to a number of unsolved murders and is being pursued by FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe).

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Cage recently said he based his character in the film on his mother, something he described as “constructive”.

“Not that she was satanic,” he clarified. “But her vocalisations, the way she would move.”

He added that there were just a few vocal tics that he recalled from his childhood that were helpful for him when getting into the Longlegs headspace.

Producers of the film were very careful not to release images of Cage’s look in the film ahead of its release – and that applied to his co-stars too. It has been reported that the first time Monroe laid eyes on him in full character, her heart rate leapt to an alarming 170bpm.

In a four-star review of the film, NME wrote: “At its heart, Monroe is superb as Harker, offering up a buttoned-down performance that never breaks. Hopefully, Longlegs doesn’t get her pigeonholed as a Scream Queen; she deserves more.”

“As for Cage, also a producer here, it’s just another worthy addition to his canon of crazies. Despite limited screentime, it might just be his most bonkers role yet. “Is it scary being a lady FBI agent?” asks one little girl of Harker. Well, when you’re confronted with Cage’s Longlegs, it most certainly is.”

For those who have already seen the film, read here about the ending and what it all meant.