It’s taken a lot of intestinal fortitude to remain a Nic Cage Completist over the years.

An Oscar winner for “Leaving Las Vegas,” great in films all over the spectrum — from “Raising Arizona” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” to “Con Air” and “Face/Off” and scores of titles in between, you had to be a bit of a masochist to track down “Bangkok Dangerous” or “Jiu Jitsu” and their ilk.

I almost always do, because even the titles between “National Treasure” movies, even the indies that aren’t “Joe” or “Pig” are made interesting by his presence.

I’ve interviewed Nicolas Cage several times over the years, and something he said during a chat in the middle of a run of not-quite-firing A-pictures (“Lord of War,” “Weatherman,” “Ghost Rider”) that eventually pushed him into B movies stuck with me.

He worked, he said, to “get out of the house and stay out of my head.” Making movies didn’t just settle tax bills and keep him solvent. He’d work through failed marriages. He’d take on other characters to distract himself from a career that seemed to wane more than wax, and whatever demons ate at him.

All the fanboy love over the decades — “Vampire’s Kiss” (in which he famously ate a roach on camera) and “Face/Off” made him a “legend” in convention-goer terms, “Kick Ass” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” chiseled that in stone — couldn’t make him forget whatever was eating him in his most troubled times.

You’ve got to respect that. That’s the classic, if not exactly healthy way an American man copes — escape to work.

“Pig” brought him back, and even though he’s still sneaking bad Bs onto his resume, we all sleep a little better at night knowing ol’Nic is out there, getting a dirty job done — beloved and ridiculed, and always in on the joke.

Happy birthday.