The internet age may have turned him into a perennial meme and an endless source of inspiration for compilation videos based solely on his signature freakouts, but Nicolas Cage has accomplished one of the rarest and most valuable things any actor could possibly hope to achieve.

There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of professional actors dotted all over the globe, and even though they all do the same job at the end of the day, how many of them have done something entirely new, unique, and distinctive with it? Not many, which is why history is likely to remember Cage for much more than his scenery-chewing histrionics.

Actors of a certain generation – and several beyond – can almost always be found fawning over Marlon Brando, which is fair when he completely revolutionised the art of screen acting. There’s never been anybody quite like him, and although there’s been a huge volume of thespians seeking to emulate him, he remains one of a kind.

Does that mean that decades from now, the current crop of stars will speak the same way about Cage? Maybe, maybe not, but what often tends to go overlooked in favour of the memes is that there isn’t anybody to have put their own inimitable spin on the discipline of acting since he came along. In fact, Nic Cage began as a creation of Nicolas Coppola in the first place, so he’s been carving out his own path from the second he changed his name.

The industry of stage, screen, and entertainment, in general, is littered with good actors, great actors, mediocre actors, and more than a few terrible ones. But how many of them have decided to take it upon themselves to build their careers upon the notion of doing things that not only haven’t been done before but couldn’t be done by anyone else? Suddenly, the list gets whittled down to an army of one.

He’s become a cult hero among a legion of supporters because he likes to lose his shit, and he’s spent a long time slumming it in the bargain basement arena of straight-to-video action thrillers. Still, even then, he could never have been accused of phoning it in. There’s only one Cage, and it’s something his peers have been celebrating for years.

Ethan Hawke called him “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art,” David Lynch branded him “the jazz musician of American acting,” and Guillermo del Toro stated with the utmost certainty that “there has not been, nor will there ever be, an actor like Nicolas Cage” before dubbing him “a master” of his craft.

Drawing his inspirations from Kabuki theatre, German expressionism, and a myriad of other influences, Cage fine-tuned his own approach into the decidedly off-kilter style he dubbed ‘Nouveau Shamanism’. The man lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps acting, but so do a lot of people. The difference is that whereas they’ve been finding ways to master the job in its current, established, and conventional guise, Cage opted to bend the art form to fit his own distinct energy.

Alex Wolff – who co-starred with Cage on the acclaimed drama Pig – could be indicative of the next batch of up-and-comers who view him not as a meme or a figure of fun, but an influence. He was born in 1997 when the freshly-minted Oscar winner headlined Con Air and Face/Off in quick succession, but that’s not how he views him as a person, performer, or even as a child of the decade.

Instead, he told Another that Cage is “one of the great actors of about four generations” who possesses “all the qualities of a great actor” that Wolff “didn’t know you could have in one package.” Now that he’s turned 60 years old and is fully evolving into the elder statesman role, perhaps it’s time to revaluate Cage as a trailblazer who did what few others have ever done, and reinvented what it means to act.