Nicolas Kim Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor, director, and producer. He is best known for his roles in various films, such as City of Angels, Bringing Out the Dead, Windtalkers, and The Weather Man. He is also well-known for voicing Zoc in the 2006 Warner Bros. animated film The Ant Bully, Grug Crood in the 2013 DreamWorks film The Croods and its 2020 sequel, Superman in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, and Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
For Disney, he portrayed Benjamin Gates in the National Treasure franchise, Balthazar Blake in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and voiced Speckles the mole in G-Force. He also played Jake Preston in the 1990 Touchstone Pictures film Fire Birds, Dr. Stanley Goodspeed in the 1996 Hollywood Pictures film The Rock, Cameron Poe in Con Air, and Randall "Memphis" Raines in Gone in 60 Seconds.
Cage was born in Long Beach, California, to August Coppola, a professor of literature, and Joy Vogelsang, a dancer and choreographer. He was raised in a Catholic family. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of mainly German and Polish descent with some English and Scottish ancestry on her father's side. His paternal grandparents were composer Carmine Coppola and actress Italia Pennino, and his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata. Through his father, he is a nephew of both director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, and a cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert and Jason Schwartzman.
Cage is the youngest of three sons. His two brothers are New York radio personality Marc "The Cope" Coppola and director Christopher Coppola. He attended Beverly Hills High School, which is known for its many alumni who became entertainers. He aspired to act from an early age and also attended UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy. He said he started acting because he "wanted to be James Dean. I saw him in Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden. Nothing affected me—no rock song, no classical music—the way Dean affected me in Eden. It blew my mind. I was like, 'That's what I want to do'."
At age 15, he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him "I'll show you acting." His outburst was met with "silence in the car". By this stage of his career, Coppola had already directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, and Robert De Niro. Although early in his career Cage appeared in some of his uncle's films, he changed his name to Nicolas Cage to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola's nephew.
Roles[]
(Fire Birds)
(The Rock)
(Con Air)
(Gone in 60 Seconds)
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- He got his stage name from Marvel Comics character Luke Cage and composer John Cage.
- Cage was originally attached to star in the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man in Iron Man during the film's early development, but in the end, Robert Downey Jr. was cast instead.[1]
