Making everyone smile is also Cage’s goal for his latest film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (in theaters April 22). In the edgy comedy, he plays a fictionalized version of himself, contemplating retirement when he accepts $1 million to attend the birthday party of a wacky fan. But Cage’s character gets roped into a wild CIA mission, forced to become versions of various characters he’s played. “It was a real high-wire act,” he says. “I’ve never done anything like that before.” With more than 100 films on his résumé, that’s a big statement. But Cage, 58, has a history of tackling diverse projects and has no plans to stick to one kind of role. His advice for young actors reflects his life view: “Look for the truth. Don’t get stuck in a style.” He once said he would like to be considered a “thespian” rather than an actor, a comment that made the online world light up with a buzz about his supposed pretension. “I should have probably used a less highfalutin word than thespian,” he says. “I don’t have a problem with people calling me an actor. I was trying to say something about the process; it’s a spiritual experience. I don’t view it as a career; I view it only as work—I’m working. You don’t like the choice [I made for a movie]? Fine. I’m happy.”
Growing Up Hollywood
Cage—born Nicolas Kim Coppola—grew up in California, in the Los Angeles household of mom Joy, a choreographer and dancer, and his literature-professor father, August. His extended family includes Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire (Cage’s uncle and aunt), and his paternal grandfather, film composer CarmineCoppola. Among his cousins are actor JasonSchwartzman, Shire’s son, and Coppola’s filmmaker daughter, Sofia. In spite of what might look like a wonderful “Hollywood life,” “my childhood was not perfect,” Cage says. “My mother could be a real loon sometimes.” He learned early to love escapism. “As a toddler, I would want to fall into the TV. I thought the people inside were so much more interesting than the people in my living room.” His father often took him to art-house cinemas, where he became captivated by the classic films of OrsonWelles, including Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. He also devoured the Western flicks of CharlesBronson and the adventures of BruceLee. And at 15, he discovered JamesDean, crediting the work of the rebellious young actor with inspiring him to pursue a film career. Before long, he changed his last name to avoid the appearance of nepotism with his famous uncle, drawing some of the inspiration for his new name from the Marvel Comics character Luke Cage. He was 18 when he made his movie debut in 1982 with a minor role in the coming-of-age classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and since then he’s amassed a formidable body of work in movies, both mainstream and offbeat: He’s played a Wall Street executive (The Family Man), an opera-loving bread maker (Moonstruck), an avenging angel (Ghost Rider), an eccentric historian (National Treasure), a scientist who becomes aware that the world is ending (Knowing) and a troubled truffle hunter (Pig). And he won an Oscar for his portrayal of a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Los Vegas (1995). When contemplating a role, he asks himself, “Do I have the emotional content? Do I have the life experience? Do I have the memories? Do I have the imagination?” He takes his characters seriously and his preparations are sometimes extreme, like when he had two of his own teeth removed—without anesthesia—to play a Vietnam vet in Birdy. “It sounds a lot wackier than it was,” he says. “I had baby teeth that had to come out, so I figured I could utilize that.” For movies that shaped his eclectic career, he’s quick to name the 1997 action film Face/Off. “That was a watershed of different styles coming into a big adventure film, which I think worked on multiple levels,” he says. Some of his other projects, particularly Leaving Las Vegas and Pig, were like “lightning in a bottle. That happened only twice in 43 years of doing this, where everything came together very quickly and effortlessly, and nothing was forced.” He also cites the Coen brothers comedy Raising Arizona and the lottery-ticket love story It Could Happen to You as having notable impacts on his trajectory as a performer.
A Mystery Man
Some of the public perceptions of Cage cast him as a wild guy who makes unpredictable, unconventional acting choices—and sometimes imbues them with emotion that can veer into hyperintensity. On the internet, short clips and screenshots from some of those performances have given rise to postings colloquially branded “Cage rage.” Those memes, however, aren’t so funny to Cage, who admits they can be amusing but says they “lack the context of how the character got there.” But he knows at least some of the Cage meme-ification is rooted in his own anxiousness to make his mark as an actor. “In the beginning, I was trying to make a big noise, get on people’s radar and be punk-rock to get a lens on me,” he says. Nowadays, he’s trying to “water down, since I’m 58, you know.” There’s also a part of Cage that enjoys being a mysterious actor who has lived in a castle and a haunted house, had pet cobras and built his own pyramid-style tomb. “In terms of things that have made their way into the public psyche, some of them I can talk about, some I don’t want to talk about,” he says. “I kind of like the enigma; I want to be your very own American Loch Ness monster.” He smiles. “I don’t want to answer all the questions. Go ahead and wonder about it. Maybe that adds to the fun.” A work-in-progress untitled documentary, of which he’s the subject, may shed some new light on Cage and his mystery, and he admits he’s “nervous about letting too many genies out of the bottle. I may have broken my own rules [about] having a mystique and not talking too much.” Though Cage strives to refrain from diving into the online rabbit hole of finding out what people are saying about him, he admits he Googles himself. “I’ve done it so many times,” he says. “I figured out that I need to get ahead of things before it becomes something that is untrue.” He recently called his attorney to get social media posts taken down by a Cage impersonator who swindled a female admirer. His new year’s resolution was to curb all the online self-searching, but he picked up his smartphone early into the year. “I broke my own resolution. And now I’m back in the cycle of the vicious circle, which I really do need to stop. It’s too stressful.”
Happy Homebody
Unlike a lot of actors who remain immersed in their characters throughout filming—and even after a project is finished—Cage says he draws a hard line between home and his work. “I know actors who will break up with their girlfriends, so they’ve got something to ‘play the character’ with. I don’t do that,” he says. And asked if he ever comes home in character, he shakes his head. “I did do that in my 20s. But that doesn’t work for me; I can’t bring it home with me. When I’m done on the set, I’m done.” Today when he’s done, he goes home to RikoShibata, 27, his fifth wife, whom he met in Japan, and with whom he recently celebrated a one-year anniversary. (He was previously married to ErikaKoike, AliceKim, Lisa Marie Presley and Patricia Arquette.) The couple lives in Las Vegas. Cage liquidated several other properties he once owned, including homes in Rhode Island, Nevada and Louisiana, an 11th-century Bavarian castle in Germany and a San Francisco mansion. His family life today is “everything I had hoped and dreamed for. I literally meditated on it, tried to conjure it up. And it happened,” he says. He and his wife are expecting a child in September, and Cage is looking forward to being a new dad again; he’s already father to sons Weston, 31, and Kal-El, 16. “So much of the childhood years I miss—watching them discover sunlight through a leaf on a tree or having a lobster on a dinner table for the first time—the shock and awe, like, ‘What is that?’” he says. “I miss going to the toy store.” He’s ready to spend his mornings in a rocking chair with his new child. “I find it like a meditation; you’re rocking and you’re singing,” he says, launching into a soulful rendition of “Three Blind Mice.” Cage says he keeps “farmer’s hours,” starting his days predawn, between 4 and 5 a.m., hopping onto an elliptical bike while simultaneously learning dialogue before making breakfast. “I like to cook,” he says. If he has time, he’ll squeeze in a movie every day. “I try to find something that stimulates my psyche.” During quarantine, he binged IngmarBergman and AkiraKurosawa films as well as silent classics. He enjoys pulling “strange Japanese movies” from his international DVD collection. He’s a self-proclaimed news junkie, addicted to CNN, and has recently been unwinding with his latest book purchase, The Collected Works of Jim Morrison: Poetry, Journals, Transcripts, and Lyrics. He also pals around with his cats, and his pet crow, Huginn, for whom he built a giant geodesic dome within his Las Vegas home. “He is very fun. He is very intelligent. He gets happy. He jumps up and down and flaps his wings like this,” Cage says, imitating his bird. At this stage of his life and career, he describes himself as homebody, even turning down roles that would interfere with his family time. “I’m not a social butterfly. I don’t like to go out that often,” he says. The concept of celebrity is still a bit odd to him, the way other people often look at him and see a celebrity. “I look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘Wow, I could really use a little more sleep.’” His fans, he knows, are a diverse bunch. “They’re all-important members of the filmgoing community,” he says, noting that his horror fans are “the most religious about the importance of the genre.” Then there are action enthusiasts, and those who love him for his romantic comedies. “I want to make all kinds of movies. That keeps me interested,” he says. He also aspires to be a writer. He once wrote a script called Paint It Black, but the sole copy was on his laptop, which he placed in a briefcase…and accidentally ran over with his car—a scene which itself could easily be the premise of a film. “One hundred twenty pages of hard work, and I never got it back,” he says with a sigh. He hasn’t written since then, but it occasionally crosses his mind to return to the world of letters. In the meantime, he’s moving ahead, pushing himself into new acting territory to satisfy his fans—and his own appetites. “I never forget that I’m a student,” he says. “I would never call myself a maestro. I’m someone that is always looking to learn, always looking to go into that which terrifies me.” And this enigmatic actor says he feels most like himself when he has a character to portray—even if the character, like in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, is him. “I’m at my best when I have a job to do. I’m healthier,” he says. “I’m a better man when I’m working.”
Cage Faves
Favorite childhood cartoon: “Felix the Cat. I loved him, his ‘bag of tricks’ and the way he would laugh with his hands on his belly. He was cool.” Childhood crush: “In first or second grade there was a girl with BuddyHolly glasses and a red vinyl raincoat. One day, she put her arms around me and hugged me and went, ‘I love you, Nicky.’ And then she never came back to school. I used to walk around trying to find this girl in the neighborhood. Never found her.” Guilty pleasure: Martinis Ideal date night: Enjoy a Dassai 23 sake and watch an Akira Kurosawa or a Hirokazu Kore-eda movie Favorite hobby: Reading Favorite animal: “My relationship with my Maine coon, Merlin, is a pretty profound relationship. So, I would have to say the cat.” Actors I’ve always idolized: “So many different ones for different things: MarlonBrando, JackNicholson, AlPacino, JerryLewis, James Dean, GeneWilder, SidneyPoitier.” Best advice I ever received: “I was visiting CharlieSheen at his house before any of us really hit it. [Sheen’s dad] MartinSheen said, ‘All that matters is, did you like where you were? Did you like the people you were working with?’ I’ve kept that as my mantra ever since.” Worst advice: “In high school, I told a friend, ‘I’m going to be a movie star.’ And he said, ‘No you’re not. You can’t do that.’ Thank God I didn’t listen to him.” Favorite tattoo: “When I first moved to Nevada, I created a Western yin-yang of the sun going through a palm tree and a rattlesnake coming up. So the high and low—the lowness of the reptile and the rattlesnake, and then the sunlight through the palm tree. I’m very proud of that. I designed that tattoo.” Biggest movie blooper: “The end of Family Man. JeremyPiven said something, which I will not reiterate. And I could not stop laughing. Look at the end of the movie. It’s there!” Next, We Ranked the 65 Best Movies of the 1990s
