10 Actors Who Made Comebacks In INSANE Movies

Acting isn't a profession for the meek, because Hollywood is a ruthless, unforgiving industry where talent is one of the only ingredients that determines success.

And so, it's extremely rare for actors to maintain consistent popularity for decades, with many once-hailed performers seeing their careers suffer a major downturn at one point or another.

But who among us doesn't love to see a talented actor rise from the embers of their own stalled career and come back stronger than ever before? 

They might not like you to call it a comeback, but that's precisely what it is.

These 10 actors all saw their careers positively flame-out for one reason or another, but years later they returned with a role which forced everyone - audiences, critics, and executives - to consider them in a new light.

And these movies weren't merely great films - they were positively wild, from face-melting horror to darker-than-dark thrillers, self-aware dramas, and surely the most outrageous movie to ever win the Best Picture Oscar.

These actors weren't merely gunning for a comeback - they wanted to do it in the most unexpected, left-field way possible, and we love them for that...

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.