I was a hyuuuge Nicolas Cage fan for the longest time! Probably from when I saw him in his first big role in Valley Girl. I was a person who would rush to see a Nic Cage movie. It would be hard not to be, looking at his '80s work. He was willing to throw himself into any role and made some pretty... original choices on how to play them. Like that whole thing with the adenoids in Peggy Sue Got Married? Where it sounded like his nose was stuffed up? That was all his idea. Even when he was in less-than-great movies like Vampire's Kiss, the viewer could still bet on a performance that no one else could pull off (that movie was most well-known for Cage eating live bugs for the film. I didn't say he was subtle!)
And then... he just seemed to stop caring.
I would peg it right around the time he won his Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. After that, it seemed he stopped challenging himself. The roles, and the movies, became more bland. Even the ones with an auteur director, like Brian DePalma's Snake Eyes, just weren't very good movies. It wasn't just me. There was at least one article written on the subject. Sean Penn, who he starred with in the lovely '40s valentine Racing With the Moon, thought he was wasting his talent. But Sean Penn's a weirdo, too, so who cares what he thinks? And now Cage pretty much does whatever he can get a paycheck for.
I kinda felt the same way about Keanu when he started out, like when he played a disaffected stoner in pitch-dark movie River's Edge. It turned out that playing a stoner was about all the range he had. It's not like the poor guy isn't trying. You can practically see him trying! Like in Liaisons or his snicker-inducing performance in Dracula. He wants to be a really good actor, but he's never gonna be a guy who loses himself in a role. He's always going to look and sound like Keanu Reeves trying to play someone. But, here in this beshitted century, I'd take a chance on a Keanu movie before I would a Cage movie. Keanu didn't spend the last couple of decades giving in to every crazy impulse until it dug him so deep in a hole that it would be impossible to crawl out without taking whatever crappy movie came along. I think Cage tried buying an island at one point. He's notoriously bad at money, marriage and sobriety. Meanwhile Keanu has carved out a career with some pretty impressive movies, he's lived a nice, normal life out of the headlines and seems like someone who could watch your dog for a weekend without it running away or ending up at a cockfight in Tijuana.
Therefore, as I think I've made clear, I apologize to Johnny Depp.
EDIT: I would also like to apologize to Nic Cage. He bought a copy of Action #1 for $150.000 in the '90s and it sold for $2 million in 2011! Not bad for being such a fuck-up! I just know someone with a bag of magic beans relieved Cage of that cash.