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Nicolas Cage Weighs In On Alec Baldwin And ‘Rust’ Tragedy, Says ‘You Do Need To Know How To Use A Gun’

   DailyWire.com
Nicholas Cage
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A fellow Hollywood actor is weighing in on the Alec Baldwin gun safety debacle. 

A-lister Nicolas Cage has participated in plenty of movies over the course of his decades-long career and has learned how to safely handle props. While he didn’t fully blame Baldwin for the tragedy on the set of the movie “Rust,” the “Face/Off” alum did mention that it was imperative for actors to be trained in the handling of weapons.

Cage made the remarks during a roundtable discussion with actors Peter Dinklage, Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Majors, and Simon Rex for The Hollywood Reporter this week. The group moderator brought up the “Rust” incident, which left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead and director Joel Souza injured. 

“I don’t want to cast blame anywhere, but I do think, and I’m not talking about anybody, but people don’t like the word movie star. We want to be humble actors,” Cage said in response to the prompt.

“But a movie star is a bit of a different kind of presentation because you need to know how to ride a horse,” he continued. “You need to know how to fight. You’re going to do fight scenes. You need to know how to ride a motorcycle. You need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars, and you do need to know how to use a gun. You do. You need to take the time to know what the procedure is. Those are part of the job profiles.”

The “Lord of War” star went on to stress the importance of stunt people for the most dangerous activities during filming.

“Now, the stuntman and the movie star are two jobs that co-exist, they co-exist,” he said. “Every stuntman needs to be a movie star and every movie star needs to be a stuntman. That’s just part of the profile… And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

“Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage added his thoughts as well, explaining how he believed movies shouldn’t have as many guns in them, period. He also described himself as “anti-gun.”

“It can be avoided because look at what you can do with movies,” the actor said. “You know that also calls into question, are there too many guns in movies?”

He continued, “We’ve all held guns in movies, probably, and I always think about that being anti-gun myself, but the character isn’t. That’s a very complicated thing. But that made it very clear that there has to be change, like, now. One hundred percent.”

Baldwin has expressed his sympathy for the fatal incident but maintains that he was not ultimately at fault for the death of Hutchins.

When asked, “Do you feel guilt?” by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos during an exclusive interview, Baldwin insisted it was someone else to blame. 

“No. No,” Baldwin replied. “I feel that there is, I feel that someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”

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