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Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage at the 66th Venice International Film Festival
Born	Nicolas Kim Coppola
Occupation(s)	Actor Producer
Years active	1980–present
Spouse(s)	Patricia Arquette (1995–2001) Lisa Marie Presley (2002–2004) Alice Kim (2004–present)

Nicolas Cage (born Nicolas Kim Coppola; January 7, 1964) is an American actor.

Cage pursued acting as a career, making his debut on television in 1981. Cage has been featured in "bad boy" roles, and has won awards such as the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1995 for his lead role in Leaving Las Vegas, and the Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor in 2002 for Adaptation.

Cage has appeared in over 60 films including Face/Off (1997), Gone In 60 Seconds (2000), National Treasure (2004), Ghost Rider (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Kick-Ass (2010). Cage has been married three times: to Patricia Arquette, Lisa Marie Presley, and Alice Kim Cage, his current wife.

Early life

Cage was born in Long Beach, California. His father, August Coppola, was a professor of literature, while Cage's mother, Joy Vogelsang, is a dancer and choreographer; Cage's parents divorced in 1976. Cage's mother is of German descent and his father is of Italian descent (his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata). His paternal grandparents were Carmine Coppola, a composer, and Italia Pennino, an actress. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, late film producer Gian-Carlo 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, who attended Beverly Hills High School (the same high school as fellow entertainers Albert Brooks, Angelina Jolie, Lenny Kravitz, Slash, Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, Bonnie Franklin and David Schwimmer), aspired to act from an early age. Cage also attended UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy. He is also good friends with fellow actor Johnny Depp, whom he advised to get into acting.

Career

In order to avoid the appearance of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, he changed his name early in his career to Nicolas Cage, inspired in part by the Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage. Since his minor role in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with Sean Penn, Cage has appeared in a wide range of films, both mainstream and offbeat. He tried out for the role of Dallas Winston in his uncle's film The Outsiders, based on S.E. Hinton's novel, but lost to Matt Dillon. He was also in Coppola's films Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married.

Other Cage roles included appearances in the acclaimed 1987 romantic-comedy Moonstruck, also starring Cher; The Coen Brothers cult-classic comedy Raising Arizona; David Lynch's 1990 offbeat film Wild at Heart; a lead role in Martin Scorsese's 1999 New York City paramedic drama Bringing Out the Dead; and Ridley Scott's 2003 quirky drama Matchstick Men, in which he played an agoraphobic, mysophobic, obsessive-compulsive con artist with a tic disorder.

Cage has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, winning once for his performance as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. His other nomination was for his portrayal of real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman's fictional twin Donald in Adaptation. Despite these successes, most of his lower-profile films have performed poorly at the box office compared to his mainstream action/adventure roles. The suspense thriller 8mm (1999) was not a box office success, but is now considered a cult film. He took the lead role in the 2001 film Captain Corelli's Mandolin and learned to play the mandolin from scratch for the part. In 2005, two offbeat films he headlined, Lord of War and The Weather Man, failed to find a significant audience despite nationwide releases and good reviews for his acting in those roles. Poor reviews for The Wicker Man resulted in low box office sales. The much criticized Ghost Rider (2007), based on the Marvel Comics character, fared better, earning more than $45 million (the top earner) during its opening weekend and over $208 million worldwide through the weekend ending on March 25, 2007. Also in 2007, he starred in Next, which shares the concept of a glimpse into an alternate timeline with The Family Man (2000).

Most of Cage's movies that have achieved financial success were in the action/adventure genre. In his second-highest grossing film to date, National Treasure, he plays an eccentric historian who goes on a dangerous adventure to find treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Other action hits include The Rock, in which Cage plays a young FBI chemical weapons expert who infiltrates Alcatraz Island in hopes of neutralizing a terrorist threat, Face/Off, a John Woo film where he plays both a hero and a villain, and World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's film regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks. He had a small but notable role as the Chinese criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu in Rob Zombie's fake trailer Werewolf Women of the S.S. from the B-movie double feature Grindhouse.

In recent years, Cage 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 includes Shadow of the Vampire, the first film from Saturn Films.

In early December 2006, Cage announced at the Bahamas International Film Festival that he planned to curtail his future acting endeavors in order to pursue other interests. On the The Dresden Files for the Sci-Fi Channel, Cage is listed as the executive producer. 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.

In November 2007, Cage was spotted backstage at a Ring of Honor wrestling show in New York City researching his role for the The Wrestler. The role was ultimately played by Mickey Rourke, who received an Academy Award nomination for his performance.

Wrestler Director Darren Aronofsky, in an interview with slashfilm.com, said of Cage's replacement that:

Nic was a complete gentleman, and he understood that my heart was with Mickey and he stepped aside. I have so much respect for Nic Cage as an actor and I think it really could have worked with Nic but ... you know, Nic was incredibly supportive of Mickey and he is old friends with Mickey and really wanted to help with this opportunity, so he pulled himself out of the race.

In 2008, Cage appeared as Joe, a contract killer who undergoes a change of heart while on a work outing in Bangkok, in the film Bangkok Dangerous. The film is shot by the Pang Brothers and has a distinct South-East Asian flavor.

In 2009, Cage starred in sci-fi thriller Knowing, directed by Alex Proyas. In the film, he plays an MIT professor who examines the contents of a time capsule unearthed at his son's elementary school. Startling predictions found inside the capsule that have already come true lead him to believe the world is going to end at the close of the week, and that he and his son are somehow involved in the destruction. The film received mainly negative reviews but was the box office winner on its opening weekend.

Also in 2009, Cage appeared in the film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, directed by acclaimed German director Werner Herzog. He portrayed a corrupt police officer with gambling, drug and alcohol addictions. This film reunited Cage with Eva Mendes, who played his love interest in Ghost Rider.

Cage will star in the period piece Season of the Witch, playing a 14th-century knight transporting a girl accused of causing the Black Plague to a monastery, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which he will play the sorcerer.

He will star in National Treasure 3, which has a possible release date as early as 2011. He will again take the role of Benjamin Gates, a cryptologist-turned-treasure hunter.

Praise and criticism

The acting work of Cage has been praised by influential film critic Roger Ebert who writes, in his "Great Movies" essay about the film Adaptation., that:

There are often lists of the great living male movie stars: De Niro, Nicholson and Pacino, usually. How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air. No one else can project inner trembling so effectively.... He always seems so earnest. However improbable his character, he never winks at the audience. He is committed to the character with every atom and plays him as if he were him.

Roger Ebert, in response to mixed reviews of Knowing and their focus on criticizing Cage, wrote an article in which he defends both Cage as an actor and the movie which, in stark contrast to other critics, Ebert gave 4/4 stars.

In March 2009, Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman called on Cage to return to dramas rather than high-paying blockbusters.

In May 2001, Cage was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts by California State University, Fullerton. He spoke at the commencement ceremony.

Personal life

Relationships and family

In his early 20s, he dated actress/singer Elizabeth Daily for two years, and was later involved with actress Uma Thurman.

In 1988, Cage began dating Christina Fulton, mother of their son, Weston Coppola Cage (born December 26, 1990). Weston appeared in Cage's film Lord of War as Vladimir, a young Ukrainian mechanic who quickly disarms a Mil Mi-24 helicopter and is lead singer of the black metal band Eyes of Noctum. In December 2009, Fulton sued Cage for $13 million and the house she is living in. The suit was in response to an order that she leave the house, brought about by the financial problems of Cage.

Cage has been married three times. His first wife was the actress Patricia Arquette (married on April 8, 1995, divorce finalized on May 18, 2001).

Cage's second wife was singer/songwriter Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, of whom Cage is a fan and on whom he based his performance in Wild at Heart. They married on August 10, 2002 and filed for divorce on November 25, 2002, after 108 days of marriage; their divorce was finalized on May 16, 2004. The divorce proceeding was longer than the marriage.

His third and current wife Alice Kim, a former waitress who previously worked at the Los Angeles restaurant Kabuki, met Cage at the Los Angeles-based Korean nightclub, Le Privé. She is the mother of his son, Kal-El (born October 3, 2005), named after Superman's birth name. Cage was once considered for the role of Superman in a film to be directed by Tim Burton. Alice had a minor role in the 2007 movie Next, which Cage produced. They were married at a private ranch in Northern California on July 30, 2004.

Real estate and tax problems

Cage had a Malibu home where he and Alice lived, but sold the property in 2005 for $10 million. In 2004 he bought a property on Paradise Island, Bahamas. In May 2006, he bought a 40-acre (160,000 m) island in the Exuma archipelago, some 85 miles (137 km) southeast of Nassau and close to a similar island owned by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

He once owned the medieval castle of Schloss Neidstein in the Oberpfalz region in Germany, which he bought in 2006 and sold in 2009 for $2.5 million. His grandmother was German, living in Cochem an der Mosel.

In August 2007, Cage purchased a home in Middletown, Rhode Island. The 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m), brick-and-stone country manor occupies 26 acres, has 12 bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms, and ocean views and borders the Norman Bird Sanctuary. The estate is called the "Grey Craig". The sale ranked among the state’s most expensive residential purchases, eclipsed by the 2007 $17.15 million sale of the Miramar mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Also in 2007, the actor purchased Midford Castle in Somerset, England.

Shortly after selling his German castle, Cage also put homes in Rhode Island, Louisiana, Nevada, and California, as well as a $7 million island in the Bahamas, up for sale.

On July 14, 2009, the Internal Revenue Service filed documents in New Orleans in connection with a federal tax lien against property owned by Cage in Louisiana, concerning unpaid federal taxes. The IRS alleges that Cage failed to pay over $6.2 million in federal income tax for the year 2007. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service has another lien for more than $350,000 in unpaid taxes dating from 2002 to 2004. Cage filed a $20 million lawsuit on October 16, 2009, against his business manager, Samuel J. Levin, alleging negligence and fraud. The lawsuit states that Levin "had failed to pay taxes when they were due and had placed in speculative and risky real estate investments 'resulting in (the actor) suffering catastrophic losses'."

Samuel Levin filed a counter-complaint and responded the lawsuit in a filing stating that he warned Cage that he was living beyond his means and urged him to spend less. Levin's filing states that "instead of listening to Levin, cross-defendant Coppola spent most of his free time shopping for high ticket purchases, and wound up with 15 personal residences", Levin's complaint continued: "Likewise, Levin advised Coppola against buying a Gulfstream jet, against buying and owning a flotilla of yachts, against buying and owning a squadron of Rolls Royces, against buying millions of dollars in jewelry and art."

In his filing Levin says that in 2007 Cage's "shopping spree entailed the purchase of three additional residences at a total cost of more than $33 million; the purchase of 22 automobiles (including 9 Rolls Royces); 12 purchases of expensive jewelry; and 47 purchases of artwork and exotic items." One of those exotic items was a dinosaur skull of a Tarbosaurus for which Nicolas Cage paid $276,000 in an auction after winning a bidding contest against Leonardo DiCaprio.

According to Cage, he owned the "Most Haunted House in America", a home located in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. The home is known as the "The LaLaurie house" after its former owner Delphine LaLaurie. The house was foreclosed and sold at auction on November 12, 2009 along with another New Orleans property for a total of $5.5 million, in the wake of his financial problems. His Bel Air home, which had six loans totaling $18 million on it, sold at a foreclosure auction on April 7, 2010, for nearly $25 million less than Cage's original asking price. Another home in Nevada also faces foreclosure auction.

Nicolas Cage remains as one of Hollywood's highest paid actors, earning $40 million in 2009 according to Forbes Magazine.

Other interests

Nicolas was director Sam Raimi's first choice to play Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in the movie Spider-Man. He has created a comic book, with his son Weston, called Voodoo Child, which is published by Virgin Comics.

Cage was close friends with Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone. His enthusiam of classic cars is well known; in 1997 via telephone bid, he broke the auction record for Lamborghinis when he placed a bid on a rare Miura SVJ for US$490,000. He has also been a fan and collector of painter and underground comix artist Robert Williams. He has written introductions for Juxtapoz magazine and purchased the painting Death On The Boards.

Filmography

See also

• Coppola family tree

References

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2. According to the State of California. California Birth Index, 1905 -1995. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California.
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5. Cowie, Peter (1988). Coppola: a biography. Da Capo Press. p. 2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help)ISBN 0306805987
6. "AOL Interview with Nicolas Cage". Cagefactor.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
7. Grant, Meg. "Nicolas Cage Interview: A Fork in the Road". Rd.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
8. Saturn Films, Cage's production company
9. 5 yahoo.com
10. SEScoops.com
11. Slashfilm.com. Interview: Darren Aronofsky - Part 1 September 10th, 2008.
12. "MTV". Moviesblog.mtv.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
13. "cinemablend". cinemablend. 2008-03-27. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
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15. Ebert, Roger. Love and hate and "Knowing" -- or, do wings have angels? March 22, 2009.
16. Gleiberman, Owen. Nicolas Cage: Artist or hack? The choice is his March 21, 2009.
17. "CSU Newsline". Calstate.edu. 2001-04-16. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
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19. The Detroit Free Press, Thursday, December 10, 2009, page 12D
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21. "AOL". People.aol.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
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27. "Nicolas Cage Sells One, Many More to Go." Luxist.com. April 3, 2009.
28. "Nicolas Cage hit with $6.2 million tax bill". Houston Chronicle. 2009-08-03.
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30. ^ "Nicolas Cage sues ex-manager for "financial ruin"". Reuters. 2009-10-16. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
31. http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/17/pf/Nicolas_Cage_lawsuit_manager.cnnw/index.htm
32. http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/17/pf/Nicolas_Cage_lawsuit_manager.cnnw/index.htm
33. Actors in head-to-head at auction house - over a dinosaur skull
34. Nicolas Cage interview - "The Late Show With David Letterman," Sept. 2, 2008
35. ^ Yousuf, Hibah (2009-11-13). "Nicolas Cage: Movie star, foreclosure victim". CNN. Retrieved 2009-11-14.
36. Beale, Lauren (April 8, 2010). "Foreclosure auction of Nicolas Cage's mansion is a flop". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
37. Lauren Beale (April 8, 2010). "Foreclosure auction of Nicolas Cage's mansion is a flop". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-04-11.
38. "Lamborghini Miura Part 6: P400 Miura SV/J". Qv500.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
39. "ISSUU" (in Template:* icon). ISSUU. Retrieved 2010-02-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
40. "Cage, Reynolds to star in CG caveman comedy". Variety. Reed Business Information. February 24, 2010. Retrieved February 26, 2010.

External links

• Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
• Template:Amg name
• World Trade Center Interview with Nicolas Cage From IGN FilmForce
• Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider video interview with stv.tv/movies

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• Misplaced Pages introduction cleanup from April 2009
• Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from April 2009
• Coppola family members
• 1964 births
• American actors of German descent
• American people of Italian descent
• American film actors
• American film producers
• Best Actor Academy Award winners
• Actors from California
• Living people
• MTV Movie Award winners
• People from Long Beach, California
• Science fiction fans