Leaving Las Vegas

Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage) works as a screenwriter in Hollywood, but his incorrigible alcoholism costs him his job. And that’s not all: his marriage and social life are in tatters too. With no prospects for the future, he decides to end it all, and he intends to do so by drinking himself to death. The best place to do that, he reasons, is Las Vegas, the decadent city where the bars are open 24 hours a day. Once he arrives in this den of iniquity, he meets the prostitute Sera (Elisabeth Shue), someone who is also fed up with her life. Both long for a touch of genuine love.

To play his role with conviction, Nicolas Cage immersed himself thoroughly in the phenomenon of alcoholism. He suggested to director Mike Figgis that he should act under the influence for all the scenes, but Figgis thought that was a bad idea. In the end, he was allowed to do one scene drunk. It earned him the Oscar for Best Actor.