Nicolas Cage has said actors need to be able to use a gun as it is “part of the job”, in comments responding to the fatal shooting on the set of Rust in which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed. Cage was speaking as part of a wide-ranging roundtable discussion for the Hollywood Reporter with fellow actors including Peter Dinklage, Jonathan Majors and Andrew Garfield. On being asked whether guns should be banned from film sets in the wake of the Rust shooting, Cage responded by saying that “movie stars” needed to know how to perform certain activities that may be outside the experience of workaday actors. “You need to know how to fight. You’re going to do fight scenes. You need to know how to ride a motorcycle. You need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars, and you do need to know how to use a gun. You do. You need to take the time to know what the procedure is. Those are part of the job profiles.” Cage also added that these can overlap with the role of a stunt performer, in a mutually beneficial way. “The stunt man and the movie star are two jobs that coexist. Every stunt man needs to be a movie star, and every movie star needs to be a stunt man.” Hutchins died, and director Joel Souza was wounded, on the Rust set in October 2021, after a live round was discharged from a gun carried by actor Alec Baldwin, as Baldwin was rehearsing for a scene. Police investigations into the incident are ongoing.