Date of birth : January 7, 1964
Birth Place : Long Beach, Calif., USA
Relations: Ex-wife: Patricia Arquette;
Kid: Weston (with former girlfriend
Christina Fulton);
Uncle: Francis Ford Coppola (filmmaker)
Education : Passed the G.E.D. and left Beverly Hills High School a year early; studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater
IN an industry in which everyone longs to be tagged a brooding, edgy rebel, Nicolas Cage is the genuine article. During the course of his movie career, Cage has had two teeth yanked out sans Novocain (while filming Birdy, 1984), has trashed his trailer in a fit of spleen (The Cotton Club, 1984), and has eaten a live cockroach on camera (Vampire's Kiss, 1989). Now there's a guy who will do anything for art.
Born Nicholas Coppola in suburban Los Angeles to dancer-choreographer Joy Vogelsang and comparative literature professor August Coppola, much of his childhood was marred by his mother's severe depression ? an illness that kept her hospitalized for years (she has since recovered). The future actor and his two older brothers were, for the most part, raised by their father, who instilled in his sons an appreciation for great works of art, literature, and cinema. Summers usually included a lengthy vacation in San Francisco, where the Coppolas would visit Dad's brother, director Francis Ford Coppola. At age 15, Nicholas, who had devoted many childhood hours to staging scenes from comic books and television shows, devoted one such family holiday to attending a summer-long acting class at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater.
Back in L.A., Nicholas led a decidedly more middle-class existence than either his wealthy Bay Area relatives or his fellow students at Beverly Hills High School. He hated school and opted to take the G.E.D. exam in eleventh grade. After getting his certificate, Nicholas landed a part as a surfer dude on a short-lived TV series called The Best of Times (1980-81), and made his feature film debut in a small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Determined not to coast to success on his uncle's coattails, Nicholas Coppola changed his name to Nicolas Cage, after a comic-book character named Luke Cage. Still, he was not averse to accepting work in his uncle's troubled-teen flick Rumble Fish (1983). That same year, Cage achieved his first glimmerings of stardom for his hangdog leading-man performance in Valley Girl.
Cage again stepped in front of his uncle's cameras to star opposite Kathleen Turner in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). Because he then made a point of varying his voice and appearance from film to film, Cage delivered an overly experimental performance that elicited terrible reviews from co-stars, studio executives, and critics alike. His lambasted piece of work did, however, benefit his career in two important ways: it mercifully guaranteed that he would never again make another teen movie; and it piqued the interest of both Cher and the moviemaking Coen brothers. Cher lobbied to have Cage cast as her love interest in 1987's Moonstruck, and the Coens sought out Cage for his first adult comedy, Raising Arizona, that same year. Both movies helped cement Cage's reputation as a quirky yet charming everyman, and those roles yielded similarly off-kilter assignments in Vampire's Kiss (1990) and Honeymoon in Vegas (1992).
By 1994, Cage had established a healthy, if not entirely fulfilling, movie career. He commanded roughly $4 million per picture and had his pick of a steady flow of decent scripts. When director Mike Figgis asked him to appear in 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, a low-budget, independent picture about a suicidal alcoholic, Cage found something he could throw his heart into. He signed on to play the doomed protagonist for the relatively paltry sum of $240,000, but the role paid off in other ways: Cage earned the most laudatory reviews of his career and a Best Actor Oscar to boot. He next delved into the action genre, playing an FBI chemical warfare expert in The Rock; a heroic ex-con in the hijacking-themed Con Air; and a sadistic criminal mastermind in the John Woo thriller Face/Off, in which he co-starred with John Travolta. In 1998, Cage played a celestial being who romances Meg Ryan in City of Angels, a weepie inspired by the Wim Wenders classic Wings of Desire. He next returned to the lucrative action-hero arena for Snake Eyes, which co-starred Gary Sinise. In 1999, he turned to producing with the indie film Shadow of the Vampire, about the making of the silent horror film Nosferatu, and joined the $20 million actor's club for his role in Gone in 60 Seconds, released in 2000.
Off-screen, Cage has always played the role of movie star to the hilt. He currently divides his time between an ever-growing number of over-the-top abodes, including two homes in the L.A. area.; a Victorian mansion in San Francisco; and a faux-German castle in the Hollywood Hills, decorated in an eclectic style he terms "hot-rod Gothic." He boasts a swank wardrobe and an equally swank fleet of European sports cars. A dedicated actor, Cage spends considerable time preparing for his roles, gleaning as much information as he can about each character's world. He also manages to work out twice a day, write poems and stories, and juggle a busy social schedule. He married actress Patricia Arquette, whom he had dated briefly eight years earlier, in April 1995 after a lightning-fast courtship. Both Arquette and Cage come from show-business families and each has a son from a previous relationship. The couple, who starred together for the first time in Martin Scorsese's 1999 film Bringing Out the Dead, agreed mutually and amicably to divorce in November of the following year.
(Actor - Filmography)
Adaptation (2001) .... Charlie Kaufman/Donald Kaufman
Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001) (voice)
Windtalkers (2001) .... Sgt. Joe Enders
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) .... Corelli
Family Man, The (2000) .... Jack Campbell
Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) .... Randall "Memphis" Raines
Bringing Out the Dead (1999) .... Frank Pierce
8MM (1999) .... Tom Welles
Welcome to Hollywood (1998) .... Himself
Snake Eyes (1998) .... Richard 'Rick'/'Ricky' Santoro
City of Angels (1998) .... Seth
... aka Stadt der Engel (1998) (Germany)
Face/Off (1997) .... Castor Troy/Sean Archer
... aka Face Off (1997)
Con Air (1997) .... Cameron Poe
Rock, The (1996) .... Dr. Stanley Goodspeed
Salute to Clint Eastwood, A (1996) (TV) .... Himself
... aka 24th American Film Institute Life Achievement Award: A Salute to Clint Eastwood, The (1996) (TV) (USA: complete title)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995) .... Ben Sanderson
Kiss of Death (1995) .... Little Junior Brown
Century of Cinema, A (1994) .... Himself
Guarding Tess (1994) .... Doug Chesnic
It Could Happen to You (1994) .... Charlie Lang
Trapped in Paradise (1994) .... Bill Firpo
Amos & Andrew (1993) .... Amos Odell
Deadfall (1993) .... Eddie
Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) .... Jack Singer
Red Rock West (1992) .... Michael
Zandalee (1991) .... Johnny
Fire Birds (1990) .... Jake Preston
... aka Wings of the Apache (1990)
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (1990) (TV) .... Heartbreaking Man
Jonathan Ross Presents for One Week Only: David Lynch (1990) (TV) .... Himself
Tempo di uccidere (1990) .... Enrico Silvestri
... aka Raccourci, Le (1990) (France)
... aka Short Cut, The (1990)
... aka Time to Kill (1990)
Wild at Heart (1990) .... Sailor Ripley
Vampire's Kiss (1989) .... Peter Loew
Never on Tuesday (1988) (uncredited) .... Man in Red Sports Car
Moonstruck (1987) .... Ronny Cammareri
Raising Arizona (1987) .... H.I. "Hi" McDonnough
Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) .... Charlie Bodell
Boy in Blue, The (1986) .... Ned Hanlan
Birdy (1984) .... Al Columbato
Cotton Club, The (1984) .... Vincent "Mad Dog" Dwyer
Racing with the Moon (1984) .... Nicky
Rumble Fish (1983) .... Smokey
Valley Girl (1983) .... Randy
... aka Bad Boyz (1983)
... aka Rebel Dreams (1983) (video title)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) (as Nicolas Coppola) .... Brad's Bud
Best of Times (1981) (TV)
(Producer - filmography)
Press Your Luck (2001)
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
© Deepak Softworks Ltd.