10 Actors Who Made Comebacks In INSANE Movies

10. Nicolas Cage - Mandy

Let's kick things off with one of the wildest career trajectories in modern Hollywood history. 

By the mid-1990s, Nicolas Cage had firmly established himself as both a bankable box office talent and firmly respected performer, even winning a Best Actor Oscar for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas.

Cage continued to star in major theatrical releases of varying quality until around 2013, when in an attempt to whittle down a massive $6.2 million tax bill, he began starring in an array of low-quality straight-to-video action-thrillers which would pay him a princely sum for a few short weeks of work.

And so began Cage's brutal critical losing streak, for though he never phoned-in his work in these movies, it was painful to see someone so talented slumming it in such pedestrian dreck.

But in 2018, after appearing in almost two-dozen junky genre vehicles, Cage's fortunes began to turn both literally and figuratively. With his tax woes abating, Cage pinged back towards quality, left-field films beginning with Panos Cosmatos' trippy horror film, Mandy.

Cage's performance was widely praised as his best in years, and in the six years since he's received round acclaim in the likes of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Colour Out of Space, Willy's Wonderland, Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Dream Scenario, Arcadian, and Longlegs.

It's great to have Nic Cage back, but as he himself declares in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, he never really left.