Nicholas Cage biography
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Nicholas Cage filmography

[h3]Nicholas Kim Coppola had some heavyweight career successes to live up to when it came to his family. Both his parents were well-respected achievers - his father August was a writer and professor in comparative literature (later to become Dean of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University) and his mother Joy was a renowned ballet dancer and choreographer. [/h3]

Meanwhile, Cage’s uncle is none other than the acclaimed director (of films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now), [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/243:0/Francis_Ford_Coppola.htm]Francis Ford Coppola[/urlnew].

Cage’s mother suffered from chronic depression and by 1976, his parents had divorced. He attended Beverly Hills High School during his youth - which famously educated many other A-list stars such as [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/1012:0/Angelina_Jolie.htm]Angelina Jolie[/urlnew], David Schwimmer and [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/796:0/Lenny_Kravitz.htm]Lenny Kravitz[/urlnew].

Studying theatre at school as encouraged by his father, Cage began to realise that experience, not education, was going to take him where he wanted to be so he chose to leave school early in order to concentrate on his acting pursuits full-time.

Initially being linked with his well-known uncle was beneficial as it landed him a part in [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/568:0/Cameron_Crowe.htm]Cameron Crowe’s[/urlnew] debut film, Fast Times At Ridgemont High in 1982 (starring with a herd of soon-to-be-stars including Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Jason Leigh). This was soon followed by a lead role in Valley Girl (1983) but his luck began to run dry and after a succession of audition rejections, Coppola decided to wave goodbye to his famous name connections. Worried that many people would judge him prematurely on the basis of his family credentials, Nicolas Coppola became Nicholas Cage, a surname chosen in homage to one his comic book heroes, Luke Cage.

Despite detaching himself from the obvious Coppola line, Cage continued to stay on close terms with his uncle and take advice from him. Cage’s next project, Rumble Fish came about thanks to a minor helping hand from Francis Ford-Coppola and he impressed enough to gain a part in Racing with the Moon with another actor climbing the steep ladder to fame - [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/590:0/Sean_Penn.htm]Sean Penn[/urlnew].

Choosing to carry on piggy-backing off his Uncle’s success, Cage was cast in Coppola’s The Cotton Club in 1984. After appearing in Birdy the same year, he once again returned to the safe helm of Uncle Francis in Peggy Sue Got Married. This film marked the end of the Uncle-Nephew working relationship though. It has been said that Cage’s chosen acting methods had become extreme (suggested that he had inherited his mother’s odd and often erratic perspective on things). So desperate was he to disappear into a role, Cage often performed in such a bizarre manner that he was seen as too flamboyant for many. Coppola had realised this after Cage’s surreal techniques incurred the wrath of studio executives who disliked his method.

One person who had valued Cage’s performances was the singer Cher and she subsequently requested he be cast as her young lover in the 1987 film Moonstruck. The film came as a long-awaited triumph to Cage as his performance was applauded and he earned himself a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor, while Cher won an Academy Award for her role.
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Meanwhile, Cage had begun dating actress Christina Fulton who later had his first child, Weston Coppola Cage in 1992. However the couple’s relationship was not to last beyond this though.
Just before Cage made Moonstruck, he had taken a part in what was to become something of a cult hit, Raising Arizona. After Moonstruck came Vampire’s Kiss in which Cage famously ate a live cockroach in the name of acting, only to be asked to do a second take!

Having won an audience in the underground world with his turn in Raising Arizona, Cage played a part somewhat reflective of himself in 1990 as an [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/116:0/Elvis_Presley.htm]Elvis[/urlnew]-obsessive in Wild At Heart (Cage is a huge Elvis fan). A stream of films continued to fill out Cage’s CV for the next couple of years from his attempts to break into the ‘mainstream’ with Wings Of The Apache, to his more natural habitat in lower budget flicks such as Deadfall, directed by his brother Christopher Coppola.

Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas was to be a huge benchmark for Cage in 1995. Thanks to Cage’s penchant for going beyond the call of duty in terms of role preparation, his part as an alcoholic writer took him first to Ireland to experience hardcore drinking in the land of writers first hand. His performance was rated highly by the critics and Cage won both a Best Actor Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

1995 was not only a good year for Cage on the work front, he also married his actress girlfriend Patricia Arquette - forging links between two great acting families. Cage had initially met Arquette in the early 80s and apparently proposed but Arquette had teased him by issuing him with a list in which he’d have to fulfill for her to accept his proposal. When Cage took the joke list with the same serious nature he approached acting parts, he managed to scare Arquette off and she subsequently avoided him for a while. Their relationship was famously tempestuous though and by February 2000 Cage had filed for divorce, withdrawing the papers two months later but finalising again by 2001.

Following the worldwide success of Leaving Las Vegas, Cage was in the position to negotiate the big-bucks offers on his own terms. The blockbuster budget film The Rock (1996) saw him star alongside [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/589:0/Sean_Connery.htm]Sean Connery[/urlnew], followed the hits Face/Off (1997) with [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/518:0/John_Travolta.htm]John Travolta[/urlnew] and the slightly less impressive Con Air (1997).

This hat-trick of action hits left room for Cage to indulge in a romantic comedy in Joel Schumacher’s City Of Angels on 1997 followed by a turn in [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/96:0/Martin_Scorsese.htm]Martin Scorsese’s[/urlnew] Bringing Out The Dead. By the time Gone in 60 Seconds was released in 2000, Cage could command a whopping $20 million fee.

Cage’s personal life was keeping the tabloids fed too. It had become well known after his part in Wild At Heart that Cage was a real-life Elvis fanatic, so the media kicked up a frenzy when he began dating [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/261:0/Lisa_Marie_Presley.htm]Lisa-Marie Presley[/urlnew] in 2001. After marrying in Hawaii in August 2002, no one could feign surprise that Cage had filed for divorce by November the same year. Reasons for the divorce attracted much speculation, including the obvious unique Elvis trophy - his daughter - and the fact that Cage wasn’t ready to let go of his bachelor life-style.
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The millennium began with Cage filming the big-budget adaptation of Louis de Bernieres’ novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in Greece. Next followed another World War II film, Windtalkers, which saw Cage reunited with John Woo.

As a progression from his acting, Cage chose to make his directorial debut with Sonny (2002) starring English actress Brenda Blethyn and Mena Suvari. Cage had been championing the project for years and had considered playing the lead part at first but realised he was too old by the time filming began so instead cast James Franco. A tense plot, the film was recognised by the critics and was nominated for a Grand Special Prize at the Deauville American Independent Film Festival in France.

Not content with having director credits added to his portfolio, Cage produced his first film- Shadow of the Vampire in 2000 with Saturn Films, the company he had founded with Norm Golightly. The film was a great success and earned a trunk load of award nominations including a Best Supporting Academy Award nod for [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/1371:0/Willem_Dafoe.htm]Willem Dafoe[/urlnew].

Back at the acting helm, 2002 brought Adaptation to our screens which saw Cage take a break from his big-budget action films and return to the land of the surreal and odd. Working with the Coen Brothers again (Raising Arizona), he plays another dual role in the same vein as Face/Off but as Charlie Kauffman (its real-life screenwriter) and Charlie’s fictional brother Donald. The part earned Cage his second Oscar and third Golden Globe nomination.

After the minor success of [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/91:0/Ridley_Scott.htm]Ridley Scott’s[/urlnew] Matchstick Men in 2003, the following year was to be more on par with the highs of Cage’s career. His divorce from Lisa Marie Presley finally came through and he married Alice Kim, a 20-year-old sushi bar waitress who he’d only met six months before. Their son, Kal-El was born in October 2005 and in true Cage fashion, was named after the birth name of Superman in the DC Comic series.

In his working life, he saw an international hit for the first time in a while with National Treasure (2004)- on similar lines to the plot of The Da Vinci Code and a topic of fascination in the media at the time. The film took $173 million at the US box office and Cage confirmed his status as a versatile A-lister.

In 2005 came Lord of War and The Weather Man, both of which failed to make any great shakes in the critic’s world. Yet 2006 marked a continuance of Cage’s appeal with the animation Ant Bully and the more controversial World Trade Centre. Director [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/875:0/Oliver_Stone.htm]Oliver Stone[/urlnew] attempted to explore the human characters involved in the 11th September attacks. Despite fears that many people would worry about the release coming too soon after the events of 2001, Cage played his role with delicate realism.
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The Wicker Man was a slight blip on the Cage radar, generally as most considered it a mistake to re-make a classic that was considered ‘untouchable.

It has been noted from Cage’s naming of his second son that he is a huge comic book collector and fan. The 2007 project of Ghost Rider finally say Cage come to play a character adapted from one of his favourite comic books (he also has a Ghost Rider tattoo).

So deep is his passion for comics that he has created his own series called Voodoo Child, which is published by Virgin Comics. Cage had been approached by executives at Virgin but had been gazumped when it came an original concept. "I said I didn't have any ideas, but I told them my son might," he said. Together with 16-year-old Weston, they brainstormed to create the six- issue illustrated series.

He may have dropped the Coppola name a long while ago but it’s clear that success is simply in his genes.

[i]Sarah Barnard[/i]
Nicholas Cage biography



- Cage owns a Lamborghini that used to belong to the Shah of Iran.

- Cage suffers from vertigo.

- Together with actors Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou (1965)) and Peter Sellers (_Dr. Stranglove (1964)_ ), Cage is the only actor with an Oscar nomination for playing multiple characters in a film (in Adaptation. (2002), he plays two characters, Donald and Charlie). Marvin is the only one who actually won one for a double role.

- Cage is (along with his cousin Sofia Coppola) the third generation of Oscar winners in the Coppola family. His uncle, Francis Ford Coppola and his grandfather, Carmine Coppola, are the other two generations. They are the second family to do so, the first family is the Hustons - Anjelica Huston, John Huston and Walter Huston.

- Cage is credited under the name Nicolas Coppola for the first and only time in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Nicholas Cage biography



Next (2007)

Grindhouse (2007)

Ghost Rider (2007)

The Wicker Man (2006))

World Trade Center (2006)

The Ant Bully (2006) (voice)

Lord of War (2005)

The Weather Man (2005)

National Treasure (2004)

Matchstick Men (2003)

Adaptation. (2002)

Sonny (2002)

Windtalkers (2002)

Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

The Family Man (2000)

Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

8MM (1999)

Snake Eyes (1998)

City of Angels (1998)

Face/Off (1997)

Con Air (1997)

Rock, The (1996)

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Kiss of Death (1995)

Trapped in Paradise (1994)

It Could Happen to You (1994)

Guarding Tess (1994)

Deadfall (1993)

Amos & Andrew (1993)

Red Rock West (1992)

Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)

Zandalee (1991)

The Short Cut (1990)

Wild at Heart (1990)

Fire Birds (1990)

Vampire's Kiss (1989)

Never on Tuesday (1988)

Moonstruck (1987)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

The Boy in Blue (1986)

Birdy (1984)

The Cotton Club (1984)

Racing with the Moon (1984)

Rumble Fish (1983)

Valley Girl (1983)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Best of Times (1981)
Nicholas Cage biography

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