Nicolas Cage

Actor

Name at birth: Nicolas Coppola

Nicolas Cage made his film debut in 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High , but it was his role in the hit Valley Girl (1984) that launched his screen career. Cage was suddenly a reliable star after the 1987 comedy Raising Arizona (with Frances McDormand) and Moonstruck (with Cher), known for his intensity and penchant for improvisation on the set. He won an Oscar as the self-destroying drunk in Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, and by the end of the decade was starring in big-budget action movies, including The Rock (1996, with Sean Connery), Con Air (1997, with Ving Rhames), Face/Off (1997, opposite John Travolta) and Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000, with Angelina Jolie). In 2003 he was again Oscar-nominated for playing nervous screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in the offbeat drama Adaptation. His other films include Bringing Out the Dead (1999, directed by Martin Scorsese), National Treasure (2004), The Weather Man (2005), and The Wicker Man (2006, with Ellen Burstyn).

Extra credit: Cage is the nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; Cage's father is Coppola's brother... Cage was married to actress Patricia Arquette from 1995-2001, and to Lisa Marie Presley (daughter of Elvis Presley) briefly in 2002 (they separated after four months of marriage but weren't formally divorced until 2004). He married Alice Kim, a former waitress, in 2004; their son Kal-el Coppola Cage was born on 3 October 2005. Cage is reportedly a comic book fan, and Kal-el is the birth name of the fictional superhero Superman. Cage also has a son, Weston, born in 1990 to Cage and his then-girlfriend Christina Fulton.

Cage joins Gary Oldman and George Hamilton in our loop They Played Vampires.