Nicolas Cage may be the most eccentric actor of his generation and we love him for it. In fact, we wish that more actors did fascinating things like sleep over at Dracula’s castle, bed alligators, order venomous snakes for calming purposes, collect dinosaur skulls, and be personally bailed out of jail by Dog the Bounty Hunter. So it is with delight that we report that Cage has segued this full-force attitude towards life and on-screen performances to a new interview, during which he admirably offers up some deeply bizarre and gloriously original details about himself.

While speaking with The Mail on Sunday’s Event Magazine, Cage is so eccentrically candid that we worry that every future actor interview will seem unbearably bland. Even when asked a familiar question, about his most embarrassing moment, for example, the actor is able to provide a fabulously over-the-top answer: “I took the most beautiful girl in the world to my prom,” he answered. “After kissing her, I was so excited I threw up on her and the sidewalk.”

So just what did we learn about the actor, aside from the fact that he apparently lived out his teenage years with the same type of dramatic intensity that he would one day project onscreen?

The actor’s earliest memory involves being fed Italian liqueur and fox meat.

I was three and a half years old, in Italy with my family. My parents had gone out. There were these women dressed in white, I think they were nuns. They gave me something to drink. It tasted a bit like liquorice. They also fed me some kind of stew, which was made out of fox meat. I was on a bed with these women. They were rocking the bed and humming a song which meant I couldn’t sleep. Looking back, I’m pretty sure the drink they gave me was Sambuca.

He bought a serial killer’s home figuring it would be great inspiration for a book.