Nicolas Cage drank his own blood while filming Dracula role

Nicolas Cage accidentally drank his own blood while portraying Count Dracula in new movie 'Renfield'.

The 59-year-old actor sank his teeth into the role of Bram Stoker's vampire opposite Nicholas Hoult as the bloodsucker's downtrodden servant and he's revealed he kept biting his own lip because his ceramic fake fangs were so sharp.

In an Ask-Me-Anything session on Reddit, Cage explained: " No reason in terms of method, but the fangs were genuine fangs, they were ceramic and quite pointy. So I did bite my lip a few times which made me drink my own blood."

The actor previously told The Sun newspaper he decided to wear the fangs as much as possible so he could get used to speaking with them in.

He explained: "I was trying to give the character an eloquent and elegant voice that was pretty hard to do with all the ceramic material in my mouth. But I got used to it by taking them home, leaving them in when I was in my hotel room."

Cage also previously insisted he took inspiration from Sir Christopher Lee's iconic portrayal of the toothy Hollywood villain, telling Collider: "We wanted it to be more homage, more Christopher Lee. I favoured Christopher Lee as Dracula and I liked his kind of sixties hair 'do, but the wardrobe, the costume, and no, I didn't come up with the idea for the rings.

"That all came out of a wardrobe. They came in with all that."

Cage added of his decision to play Dracula in the film: "Well, first of all, I don't know how you say no to Dracula, but two things come to mind. One, he's a character that's been done well many times and then been done poorly many times. So you want to be on the side of doing something well.

"And also you want to be on the side of doing something fresh and something that pops. To me, because the movie's really not about me, Dracula rather, I don't have a lot of screen time.

"It's really Nick Hoult's movie, and it's about Renfield."

'Renfield' hits cinemas on April 14.