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Nicolas Cage (born January 7, 1964) is an American Academy Award-winning actor. Cage has also worked as a director and producer, through his production company Saturn Films. As of 2007, he has been nominated twice for an Academy Award as Best Actor in a Leading Role, winning one of them for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas.
Early life
Cage was born Nicholas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California. His father, August Floyd Coppola, is a comparative literature professor and a pioneer of studies for the blind, while his German mother, Joy Vogelsang, is a choreographer and dancer who suffered from chronic depression; the two divorced in 1976. Cage's father is an Italian American, with his paternal grandparents being Carmine Coppola and Italia Coppola, an actress. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the cousin of director Sofia Coppola and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are Christopher Coppola, a director, and Marc "The Cope" Coppola, a New York radio personality. Cage was raised in the Catholic religion.
Cage, who went to the same high school as fellow entertainers Albert Brooks, Angelina Jolie, Lenny Kravitz, Rob Reiner, and David Schwimmer, aspired to act from an early age. His first (non-cinematic) acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy.
Career
In order to avoid cries of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, Cage changed his name from Nicholas Coppola early in his career. The assumed surname is inspired by Marvel Comics character Luke Cage, a streetwise superhero. Since his feature film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which he had a minute role opposite Sean Penn, Cage has appeared in a wide range of films, both mainstream and offbeat, including lead in Vampire's Kiss.
Cage has twice been nominated for an Academy Award and won once, for his performance as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. His other nomination was for playing real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman's fictional twin Donald in Adaptation. Both of those films were offbeat, low-budget films to which Cage lent his superstar clout. Despite these successes, most of his lower-profile films have performed poorly at the box office compared with his more mainstream, action-filled efforts. In 2005, for example, audiences ignored two offbeat, non-mainstream films he headlined, Lord of War and The Weather Man. Despite good reviews for his acting and nationwide releases for both films, neither found a significant audience. Poor reviews for the film 'The Wicker Man' did not, inversely, create a hit.
Most of his financial successes have come from his forays into the action-adventure genre. In his highest grossing film to date, National Treasure, he played an eccentric historian who goes on a dangerous adventure to find treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Other action hits in which Cage has starred include The Rock, in which he played a young FBI chemical weapons expert who infiltrates Alcatraz Island in hopes of neutralizing a terrorist threat, and World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's film regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In recent years, Cage has experimented in other film-related fields besides acting. He made his directorial debut with Sonny, a low-budget drama starring James Franco as a male prostitute whose mother (Brenda Blethyn) serves as his pimp. Cage had a small role in the grim film, which received poor reviews and a short run in a limited number of theatres.
Cage's producing career has seen more success. Shadow of the Vampire, the first film produced by Saturn Films, the company he founded with partner Norm Golightly, was nominated for an Academy Award. He also produced The Life of David Gale, a death penalty-themed thriller with Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet.
In early December 2006, Cage announced at the Bahamas International Film Festival that he would be taking time off from acting. Accordingly, he has eight films currently in the works. Cage said, "I feel I've made a lot of movies already and I want to start exploring other opportunities that I can apply myself to, whether it's writing or other interests that I may develop". Cage is listed as the executive producer of the The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Personal life
In his early 20s, he dated Jenny Wright for two years and was later involved with Uma Thurman. Cage has been married three times:
* Patricia Arquette (April 8, 1995 to May 18, 2001) - Cage proposed to on the day he met her in the early 80's. Arquette thought he was strange, but played along with his antics by creating a list of things Cage would have to do to "win her hand", including obtaining the autograph of reclusive author J.D. Salinger. However, when he seriously started working through the list of demands, Arquette became scared and avoided him. However they met again many years later and went on to marry.
* Lisa Marie Presley (Married on August 10, 2002 and separated after four months in December 2002; their divorce was finalised on May 16, 2004) - the daughter of Elvis Presley, of whom Cage is a fan and based his performance in Wild at Heart on. He later said they shouldn't have been married in the first place.
* His third (and current) wife, Korean-American Alice Kim, is a former Kabuki restaurant waitress, with whom he has a son, Kal-El (born October 3, 2005). Nicolas and Alice met in February, 2004 at Le Privé, a Los Angeles nightclub. He took her to the Oscars a few weeks later, and married her in July 2004. Cage had a Malibu home where the couple lived, but in 2004 he bought a property on Paradise Island, Bahamas. In 2005 he sold his Malibu home for $10 million. In May 2006 he bought a 40 acre island in the Exuma archipelago which had been on the market for $3 million, some 85 miles southeast of Nassau and close to a similar island owned by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
* On 19 July 2006 Cage bought the old medieval castle of Schloss Neidstein (see de:Schloss Neidstein) in the Oberpfalz region in Germany. His grandmother was German, living in Cochem an der Mosel.
The name of his second child, Kal-El is also the birth name of Superman in the DC Comics universe. Cage is a long-term fan of comics and considers them to be the modern equivalent of mythology. He was once attached to play Superman in a film to be directed by Tim Burton. Cage even did fittings of the costume, but the project died due to budget and screenplay concerns. Nicolas was Director Sam Raimi's first choice to play Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in the movie Spider-Man. (Apparently this was before he met Willem Dafoe) Cage also has a tattoo of Ghost Rider on his body (which, in an ironic twist, had to be covered with makeup when he played the character in a big-budget film adaptation).
Personal interests
Cage is also a fan of folklore and mythology, and has always shown an affinity towards study of the occult, history, and arcane lore. His favorite movie is director Stanley Kubrick's controversial film, A Clockwork Orange.
In the second week of February 2007 while appearing on the 'Tonight Show' with Jay Leno promoting his new movie Ghost Rider, Cage stated that one of his “great interests…was 16th century German mysticism”, which can only be meant the writings of Jacob Boehme, a prolific author of Neoplatonic-like mysticism and speculation about the One (Godhead).
Cage has many close friends within the entertainment industry, including Jim Carrey (whom he met on the set of Peggy Sue Got Married), late musician Johnny Ramone, and Tom Waits. He trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under instructor Royce Gracie and was given an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts by California State University, Fullerton in May 2001. Cage delivered a speech at the commencement.
Cage is an avid collector of fossils and according to a Simpsons Series 9 DVD commentary, once paid $60, 000 for a collection of 12 trilobites, outbidding a member of the writing team on popular animated TV series "The Simpsons". The writer claims that when returning to the auction house a year later the curator informed him that he had grossly overpaid.
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