Nicolas Cage Says His First Memory Is From Inside His Mom's Womb

Expectant parents are often told that their babies can hear things from inside the womb, that they know when their mom is upset or stressed out. They are so connected to their mother that they are in tune with everything she is experiencing. But do they remember that feeling? According to Nicolas Cage, it’s totally possible. Because Cage, who is not in fact a medical expert, it behooves me to remind everyone, recently said his first memories are from his mother’s womb. And he is a 59-year-old adult man, so that’s a long time to remember being inside someone’s womb.

The Renfield actor sat down for an interview on Late Night with Stephen Colbert and was asked to recount his very first memory. And it was a doozy. “Let me think. Listen, I know this sounds really far out and I don’t know if it’s real or not but sometimes I think I can go all the way back to in utero and feeling like I could see faces in the dark or something,” Cage told Colbert.

He went on to admit that he knows “that sounds powerfully abstract, but that somehow seems like it maybe happened. Now that I am no longer in utero, I would have to imagine it was perhaps vocal vibrations resonating through to me at that stage.”

While a 2010 study published in Child Development did concede that fetuses do retain memory or “habituation” in utero, it’s generally accepted that people cannot remember being in the womb. In fact, most psychologists believe people don’t have the ability to remember anything from before their first birthday. So Cage’s claim that he can remember being inside his mother’s womb seems questionable. But interestingly enough, he’s not the first person to make such a claim.

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury insisted that he remembered every detail of being born, according to his book The Bradbury Chronicles, from the feeling of his head going through the birth canal to the bright lights as he was born. If Cage remembers being in utero, he’s actually done Bradbury one better.

Cage did concede to Colbert that he doesn’t “even know if I remember being in utero, but that thought has crossed my mind.” It was quite a long time ago, after all. But if he can remember back that far, we should be studying his brain. He might be on to something.