It seems like Nicolas Cage doesn’t turn down anything nowadays. From Left Behind to Season of the Witch, the last five years haven’t been full of Cage’s best decisions. However, there was one point when Cage was a little more choosy, and he turned down what could have been one of the biggest roles of his career.

In a recent interview, Cage revealed that he was offered a lead role in Lord of the Rings, but he ended up turning it down. So which Nicolas Cage Lord of the Rings pairing almost happened?

Newsweek (via The AV Club), Cage revealed that he was offered the role of Aragorn, the part that ended up being played spectacularly by Viggo Mortensen in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy. So why didn’t he take the role? Cage explains:

“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 doesn’t elaborate on what those things are, but his family probably came into play when considering moving to New Zealand for three years to shoot the movies back-to-back. But Cage has a positive outlook on his decision to turn down the role:

“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.”

Yeah, a lot of us enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, but now I’m going to dream about how amazing it would have been to see Nicolas Cage interacting with hobbits. How dare Cage deprive us all of what could have been the most majestic hero of the 21st century?

In all seriousness though, it’s probably for the best that Cage didn’t take the role of Aragorn, because I feel like it really would have brought the movie down. Viggo Mortensen was perfect in the role, and Cage probably would have just been distracting, mostly because of the wig he would have had to wear to play the King of Gondor. And even though Lord of the Rings became one of the biggest film trilogies ever, Cage doesn’t regret his decision to turn it down:

“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.”

But sadly, his life didn’t allow that, and we’ll just have to dream of what it would have been like to hear Cage say, “Let’s hunt some Orc.” Or maybe some kind soul will get him to read some lines from the movie in his next interview.