Nicolas cage where is he from

Watch the video. Sign In. Nicolas Cage Actor Producer Director. Up 29 this week. View rank on IMDbPro ». He is of Italian father and Polish and German mother descent. Cage changed his name early in his career to make his own See full bio ». Filmography by Job Trailers and Videos. Share this page:. The Rise of Will Smith. Around The Web Provided by Taboola. Details only on IMDbPro ». Editors' Picks: Streaming on Netflix.

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How Much Have You Seen? How much of Nicolas Cage's work have you seen? User Polls If you had one chance to travel into the past Killing League See more polls ». Won 1 Oscar. See more awards ». So many directors are so arrogant. For example, Klaus Kinski -- who Werner Herzog has a legacy with -- he was very frustrated with the arrogance. We always hear Werner's side of the story about "Klaus was this and Klaus was that" but you never get to here Klaus' side of the story.

I was doing a scene on "Bad Lieutenant" -- it was in my second day of shooting -- and we all know the imagination and preparation required to think I was on cocaine for the character. There was a little bottle of baby powder, and I'm snorting that.

I'm psyching up, I'm psyching up, and he comes up and says in German accent , "Now Nicolas, what is in that vial? After four hours of this you're gonna actually ask me that? Take me out of my preparation? You would think the director would understand the actor's process and give us the space and the room to do what it is we need to do.

I don't want to minimize the effort that goes into having a career, but now with the video age, let's face it, you can write your own stories and you can make your own movies and get it out. Or go on stage somewhere in a small venue off-off-off-Broadway. Usually it's very cathartic.

The hard stuff is when you're not feeling great and you have to do a really happy scene. James Dean in East of Eden , the scene where he's trying to give Raymond Massey the money on his father's birthday. Oh my God, I have to do this. Nothing else ever affected me as strongly. He's an interesting one. He was there and had some fun stories. I told him how he was one of my heroes from the time he played Evel Knievel.

We had cigars, and very expensive bottles of wine were opened, and Jim and I were going, "This is great, man.

It was at that point that George became the fox in the Pinocchio story. He happens to look quite a bit like that fox. I would not want to play cards with George Hamilton. I used bonds my grandmother had given me to rent a tuxedo and a limousine so I could go to the prom with this beautiful girl. And at the end of the night I went to kiss her and she responded. I was so nervous that my stomach got really nauseous and I said, "Excuse me" and just threw up on the street all over my shoes and my rented tux.

The limo driver wouldn't let me in the car. He split and I had to walk home. That was my prom night. I don't like it. I've never gotten over it. My father always believed that if I was going to have a religion I should discover it on my own and not have it crammed down my throat at a young age.

I kind of wish I had some religion. I had some fear that the movie would not get released. I still torment myself. I have a lot of self-doubt. We were fishing in Napa Valley and walked right into it. There was a huge one coiled in front of us.

A bigger one, to the left, was uncoiled, so I knew he wasn't a problem. We had to go over the coiled one, so we felt trapped and paralyzed with fear. There was nowhere to run, we were surrounded. I saw this pole with a nail through it, and I knew that I had to do something, so I grabbed the pole and pounded the snake. Then it came up and started rattling and was about to strike. I killed it, but felt bad about it. I felt anything you kill you've got to eat, so I took it home, cut the poison glands out, took the rattles off and cooked it.

I had taken it to a mechanic to put an automatic shifter in it. The mechanic did a really sloppy job. If you barely knocked the shifter it would go into separate gears.

I was driving on the Hollywood Freeway and I accidentally bumped it into park. I was doing 80 mph at 10 p. I wound up facing traffic, and then a Mack truck was coming at me. I thought, 'This is it, I'm dead'. The truck driver had a CB radio and said, "Put the car in reverse.

With acting it's not something you're supposed to do-you're never supposed to mimic or copy another person. I've always called that my Warhol performance, because I tried to subvert the image. I turned it down three times. Francis said, "I really need you to be in the movie. He was the babe to Kathleen Turner 's starring role. Just like women don't want to play the babe in movies, I didn't want to be Kathleen Turner 's babe.

I just wanted to play a character. So I thought, How can I make this guy really far out? I asked Francis about it on the phone and he said, Absolutely. I said, "I want to go really far out. And also, it was the way a lot of guys in high school sounded before their voices changed-they always had this high-sounding voice that would crack.

When I see the movie now I'm really happy that I did that. I really am. He was the first person to believe in me as an actor, the one who first said he understood what I was talking about. It was on The Dick Cavett Show Before we went on he said to me, "Why aren't you wearing your leather jacket? Didn't you learn anything from Dennis Hopper? Then I went out and started talking about how if Picasso could paint surreal, why couldn't actors try to achieve that as well?

Then Miles came on, and he was very considerate and he said, "I hear what you're saying. Ever since then he stayed in my thoughts. He said the words I needed to hear to keep going with my choices.

It's weird because my surrealist name, Cage, is actually taken from a black character, Luke Cage. The first time that I played Ghost Rider Blaze was easy; I knew he was a man who had been living with a curse for 8 years of having his head light on fire, and the tone that would take. I compared him to a cop, or a paramedic who develops a dark sense of humour to cope with the horrors he has seen. But Blaze has also caused the horrors, so he's hiding out because he doesn't want to hurt anyone else.

Ghost Rider was an entirely new experience, and he got me thinking. I think that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was mentally taxing, if only because I had to go to a Christmas party shortly after I had wrapped photography in Romania at 2 in the morning as the Ghost Rider.

The invitation had a Christmas ornament on it with Ghost Rider's face on it as a tree. I had a couple of schnapps and went to the party; I had not entirely let go of whatever magic I had been channelling, and all hell broke lose.

In fact, I think I kept saying over and over: "Merry Christmas, you assholes! Superman is an American myth.

Like the English have Shakespeare. I would like to see a sequel to Lord of War I think it would work really well, especially in this day and age where guns are at the center of political discussion. And also the boy in the movie, my son, there's this idea that he grows up and he goes into the trade and then I'm trying to get him out of it. I think that could be a very interesting movie. I hate violence. I just hate it. It gets inside. I'm amazed that people are capable of those kinds of things to children and women.

I'm up for anything that will get me to the truth of a performance. There's very few things that make me laugh. Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh - that was genius - and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me. I'm one of those guys where the more coffee I drink, the more stunts I do, the more relaxed I get.

I mean, that's as bad as it gets: 2am and there's a naked man standing in front of your bed watching you sleep. It's not funny, but somehow people find it amusing. Halloween is a great holiday for any actor if you think about it. It's all about dress-up and playing characters. So yeah, it's always had a special place for me.

I spent time in there alone in total darkness to get some inspiration to write the great American horror novel, but I didn't get far. I'm not gonna go into detail. Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard.

In any other industry it's considered a quality and something to behold. I haven't isolated myself. He chose the name Cage as a tribute to comic-book superhero Luke Cage.

Cage is known for his edgy, intense personality and for his passion for method acting. He is said to have had two teeth pulled for his role in Birdy , slashed his arm for Racing With the Moon and swallowed a live cockroach for Vampire's Kiss He is also alleged to have destroyed a street vendor's remote-controlled car in a fit of rage while preparing for his role as a mobster in The Cotton Club Cage got his start in teenage comedies, with his debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High , also featuring Sean Penn , followed by a leading role as a punk rocker in Valley Girl Francis Ford Coppola gave him a small role in his critically acclaimed Rumble Fish His first serious dramatic role was opposite Matthew Modine in Birdy In he starred in the romantic City of Angels with Meg Ryan.

Cage also starred in Adaptation , playing both ill-tempered screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and twin brother Donald. After reuniting with Woo for the disappointing Windtalkers , Cage rebounded with the well-received Matchstick Men The busy actor also starred in director Jon Turteltaub's holiday blockbuster National Treasure , playing an archaeologist-historian who believes a treasure map is hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

In he reprised his role in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Cage went on to star in big-budget features like The Sorcerer's Apprentice , Season of the Witch and Stolen , which, at best, drew lukewarm reviews.