Currently promoting his new film Pay the Ghost [read our review here], Nicolas Cage has been speaking to Newsweek about his desire to work with such directors as Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino in the future, as well as some of the roles he was offered over the years that for one reason or another he had to turn down.

One of those was the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings (played by Viggo Mortensen), which Cage says he was keen to take on but family matters were more pressing at the time:

“There certainly were movies that I probably would have benefited from if circumstances in my life allowed me to make them. Lord of the Rings. That trilogy. Aragorn. Or The Matrix. But the thing is about those movies, I can watch them. I can enjoy them as an audience member. 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. 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.”

What do you think of the idea of Cage in the role of Aragorn? Could it have worked? Leave us your thoughts as ever in the comments section below…

Pay the Ghost is out now in the US with a UK release set for October 23rd.