Nicolas Cage Does Not Have Any Regret Turning Down Lead Roles in 'The Lord of the Rings,' 'The Matrix'

American actor Nicolas Cage is one of the few Hollywood stars who has enjoyed (and suffered from) good and bad movie roles alike. Throughout his entire career, Cage managed to land highly covetable roles, but he has also passed up on some pretty good ones too.

During an interview with Newsweek, Cage revealed that he was actually offered the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy written by J.R.R. Tolkien before it was passed on to Viggo Mortgensen. He was also offered the role of Neo in "The Matrix" before it was given to Keanu Reeves.

Those two roles really propelled the careers of both Mortensen and Reeves, and their acting skills were only highlighted in the films they appeared in. Knowing that, Cage must have felt pretty bummed that he decided to give both up. However, the actor said that he is not one to dwell on spilt milk.

"I don't really have any regrets. I think regret is a waste of time. I try to always move forward as opposed to dwelling on the past or the movies that might have happened. There certainly were movies that I probably would have benefited from if circumstances in my life allowed me to make them," he said.

Cage explained that he passed up the roles not because he did not like them, but it was because he had other commitments to attend to.

"There were different things going on in my life at the time that precluded me from being able to travel and be away from home for three years," he said.

The only silver lining he could see for passing up on those roles is the fact that he can "enjoy the movies as an audience member, because I don't watch my own movies."

"But the thing is about those movies, I can watch them. I can enjoy them as an audience member," he further said. "I don't really watch my own movies. And so I genuinely do have the joy of watching these-especially with 'Lord of the Rings.'"

Cage knows that he gets talked about a lot on the internet, and that a lot of people have nasty things to say about crappy roles and movie flops. But he admits that he doesn't really know how to "assess" the criticisms online.

"It's sort of completely out of my reference point for anything that, at least before the internet, has happened in my career. I don't even know how to process it. So I try not to think too much about it," he said.