Nicolas Cage doesn’t really care if you know he’s related to Francis Ford Coppola.
The actor, best known for his lively performances in flicks such as Con Air and Face/Off, famously changed his name from Nicolas Coppola to Nicolas Cage at the start of his career. He told a boisterous audience this afternoon at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that he made the switch for two reasons.
The first appeared to be what Cage described as some early career on-set bullying.
“I did a little movie called Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Cage said. “When I was on set, some of the other actors couldn’t believe I had talent because I was Coppola’s nephew. They would quote lines from Apocalypse Now and change lines to ‘I love the smell of Nicholas in the mornings instead of napalm in the morning.’”
Related Stories
Cage continued to say that the second and most pressing reason behind his name change was the temperament of the directors he was working with.
“Directors are a pretty egocentric bunch, and they’re a very competitive group,” he said. “I didn’t think any filmmaker in their own right would want the name Coppola above the title of their movie. So I changed my name predominantly because of that.”
He added: “I’m blessed to have been born into a family of artists.”
The Con Air actor said he landed on the name Cage after considering Nicolas Blue — after his favorite color — because he was a fan of Marvel’s Luke Cage comics.
“I think Nick Cage actually sounds better than Nicolas Cage. But I went with Nicholas,” he said.
Cage was among a series of high-profile names, including Halle Berry, Andrew Garfield, and Gwyneth Paltrow, who were announced as late additions to the popular ‘In-Conversation’ sidebar here at Red Sea. The session was led by prominent Arab journalist Raya Abirached, who quickly lost control of the room to Cage megafans, who routinely lept out of their seats and called out to the actor, asking him to discuss their favorite performances.
One popular title was his 1987 comedy Moonstruck, in which he starred alongside singer Cher, who Cage said “fought” with the studio to cast him in the pic. Cage said after his casting, he traveled to Cher’s home and asked her why she was so determined to cast him in the pic.
Cage said she replied: “I saw you in Peggy Sue Got Married and thought it was like a two-hour car accident, and I had to have you.” Cher was referring to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1986 comedy also starring Jim Carrey and Sofia Coppola.
In 1996, Cage won the Best Actor Oscar for Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas, also starring Elisabeth Shue and Julian Sands. Borrowing from academic lingo, the actor said the moment served as his “tenure” promotion in the business, meaning directors would now give him an “extra two minutes” before shooting down one of his ideas.
Cage added that after the Oscar win, he received an “old school” telegram from his uncle, Godfather maverick Francis Ford Coppola, who sent him a comedic congratulatory note. Cage said the message read: “Congratulations, Nicky, from Francis Cage, Eleanor Cage, Roman Cage, and all the rest.”
“It was pretty clever,” he said.
Digging further into his extensive career, Cage offered a series of ratings on his completed features, telling the audience that Vampire’s Kiss, Leaving Las Vegas, Raising Arizona, Adaptation, and the upcoming A24 feature Dream Scenario are the five “best scripts” he’s read in his 45 years in the business.
Moving forward, however, he told the audience that he feels he has partly exhausted his creative voice in cinema, reiterating recent comments about perhaps falling back from the big screen.
“Now I’m thinking about television,” he told the audience in Jeddah. “My son turned me on to Breaking Bad, and I saw Bryan Cranston stare at a suitcase for one hour. I never get time to stare at a suitcase for an hour. I said let’s do some TV.”
Elsewhere, Cage told the audience inside the cinema at the Ritz in Jeddah that he had once been close to starring in a Superman film directed by Beetlejuice auteur Tim Burton, but the pic was canned because of anxious studio heads.
“Tim was hot off Mars Attacks!, and it was a brilliant movie. They wanted Renny Harlin to direct it, but I knew if you’re gonna play that part, you have to hit the bull’s eye. We got really close, but the studio called and shut the whole thing down,” he said. “I think they were afraid about how much it would cost and they would get their money back.”
Much to the glee of the Red Sea audience, Cage did, however, clarify that he won’t be “saying no to all movies ever again” as he makes what he described as a transition to the small screen.
“I’m just saying that my selection process is gonna be very severe,” he said. “And, look, I have a 15-month-old daughter at home. I wanna be home for her. So television makes sense on a family level, too.”
On his upcoming feature Dream Scenario, Cage teased the audience, telling them the pic contains him in the “most embarrassing love scene in cinema history.”
The Red Sea Film Festival runs until Dec 9.