Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage (birthname: Nicolas Kim Coppola) is a brand and cult unto himself. He is the rare American movie star with a genuine outsider reputation as an artist recognized for his risky and wild approach to the art form.

Although he became one of Hollywood’s wealthiest actors at one point after a string of mega-hits including The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997),  National Treasure (2004), Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), John Woo’s Face/Off (1997) with John Travolta, and Ghost Rider (2007), along with its sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012), Nicolas Cage is certain to be best remembered for his more distinctive work in films that encouraged his exploratory side. 

These movies tend to fall into two different camps—general audience entertainment, and bold, auteur-driven, visionary movies. The former include such iconic turns as Leaving Las Vegas (1995), for which Cage won the Best Actor Oscar; John Dahl’s Red Rock West (1993); The Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987); Moonstruck (1987) with Cher; Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); Vampire’s Kiss (1989) with Jennifer Beals. 

The latter includes some of the most colorful and distinctive American movies in recent history, including Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation (2002), which earned Nicolas Cage his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; Werner Herzog’s stunning Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009); David Lynch’s ultraviolent love story, Wild at Heart (1990), in what’s surely one of Cage’s most unleashed performances alongside Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe; Joe (2013), a lovely David Gordon Green film based on Larry Brown’s novel; Cage’s crazed turn in Brian Taylor’s comic horror film, Mom and Dad (2018); his lauded turn as an embittered former chef in 2021’s Pig; and, for some, Cage’s most astonishing and radical performance in Panos Cosmatos’ phantasmagorical thriller, Mandy (2018).

During the past decade, Nicolas Cage has deployed a strange yet crafty strategy of appearing in blatantly bad movies he seemed to make only for the paycheck—which, was the case, as Cage was paying off millions in a decade’s worth of debts, plus unpaid back taxes. At the same time, this also earned him a new-found rep as a beloved cult actor (best exemplified in Mandy and Pig) who reveled in taking chances and working with new filmmakers, far from the reach of Hollywood studios.

Typical of this approach was Cage’s performance, playing a character named “Nick Cage” (a more bedraggled version of himself), in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022). His role as Dracula in Universal’s Renfield (2023), directed by Chris McKay and co-starring Nicholas Hoult, marked one of Cage’s biggest mainstream Hollywood roles in his colorful, wide-ranging career.

Cage starred in writer-director Tim Brown’s Cayman Islands-set crime comedy, The Retirement Plan (2023), with Ron Perlman, Ashley Greene, Jackie Earl Haley, Ernie Hudson, and Lynn Whitfield, but proved a box-office failure in release (less than $1 million against $20 million costs) via Joker Films. Cage earned a Golden Globe Award for best actor nomination as star (and a producer) of the acclaimed black comedy, Dream Scenario (2023), written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, with Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, and Dylan Baker, and which premiered at the Toronto film festival and released by A24.

Nicolas Cage reunited with indie filmmaker Ben Brewer for the post-apocalyptic horror thriller, Arcadian (2024), with co-stars Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, and Sadie Soverall, and was released by RLJE Films after premiering at the South by Southwest film festival. Cage portrayed a serial killer in director/writer Osgood Perkins’ horror-thriller, Longlegs (2024), co-starring Maika Monroe, Alicia Witt, and Blair Underwood, and was released by Neon.

Cage starred in the Australian-Irish psychological thriller, The Surfer (date to be announced), directed by Lorcan Finnegan, followed by Cage starring in (and also producing) director/writer Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War (2015) sequel, Lords of War (date to be announced), with Bill Skarsgård and Laura Harrier.