AceShowbiz - Nicolas Cage was inspired by Christopher Lee for his take on Dracula. The 59-year-old actor portrays the iconic vampire in Universal's upcoming movie "Renfield" - which sees Nicholas Hoult play Dracula's devoted servant - and he turned to late legend Lee's Hammer Horror films to help craft his interpretation of Bram Stoker's character.

"Well, I had a lot of help. There were a ton of super-talented people on that movie that helped design the look. We wanted it to be more homage, more Christopher Lee," he told Collider.

"I favored Christopher Lee as Dracula and I liked his kind of sixties hairdo, 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. Maybe they sent something in me that I would like that, but that was really their contribution."

Meanwhile, Cage admitted he doesn't feature too heavily in the movie and, while he "didn't have the time" to take too deep a dive into "Dracula's pathos," he still had the chance to put his own stamp on the character.

He explained, "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. I didn't have the time, like the two-hour narrative to really dig deep into Dracula's pathos per se. It's not that."

"But I did have enough screen time to be able to try to develop a pop-art style to the character that hopefully will be a nice contribution to the other performers that have done it, that have had their take on this legendary character in both literature and cinema."