Watch Nicolas Cage Online

As of 2008, Cage has been nominated twice for an Academy Award as Best Actor in a Leading Role, winning the award for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas.

Cage was born in Long Beach, California. His father, August Coppola, is a professor of literature, while Cage's mother, Joy Vogelsang, is a dancer and choreographer; the two divorced in 1976. His mother suffered from chronic depression. Cage's mother is of German descent and his father is Italian American, with his paternal grandparents being Carmine Coppola and Italia Pennino, an actress. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the cousin of director Sofia Coppola and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are Christopher Coppola, a director, and Marc "The Cope" Coppola, a New York radio personality. Cage was born into a Roman Catholic household and remains Catholic to this day.

Cage, who attended and dropped out of Beverly Hills High School (the same high school as fellow entertainers Albert Brooks, Angelina Jolie, Lenny Kravitz, Slash, Rob Reiner, Bonnie Franklin and David Schwimmer), aspired to act from an early age. His first (non-cinematic) acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy. He is also good friends with fellow actor Johnny Depp, whom he advised to get into acting.

In order to avoid the appearance of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, he changed his name from Nicolas Coppola to Nicolas Cage early in his career. The assumed surname is inspired by Marvel Comics character Luke Cage, a streetwise superhero. Since his feature film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which he had a minute role opposite Sean Penn, Cage has appeared in a wide range of films, both mainstream and offbeat. He even wished for the role of Dallas Winston in his uncle's film The Outsiders, based on S.E. Hinton's novel, but lost to Matt Dillon.

He has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, and won once, for his performance as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. His other nomination was for playing real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman's fictional twin Donald in Adaptation.. Despite these successes, most of his lower-profile films have performed poorly at the box office compared with his more mainstream, action-filled efforts. In 2005, for example, two offbeat, non-mainstream films he headlined, Lord of War and The Weather Man, failed to find a significant audience despite good reviews for his acting and nationwide releases for both films. Poor reviews for The Wicker Man preceded a flop, but the critically panned Ghost Rider (2007) was a significant hit, earning more than $45 million during its opening weekend (landing in the top spot) and over $208 million worldwide through the weekend ending on 25 March 2007. More recently he starred in 2007's Next, which shares the concept of a glimpse into an alternate time track with The Family Man (2000). Next was not a commercial success.

Most of the actor's financial successes have come from his forays into the action-adventure genre. In his second-highest grossing film to date, National Treasure, he plays an eccentric historian who goes on a dangerous adventure to find treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Other action hits include The Rock, in which Cage plays a young FBI chemical weapons expert who infiltrates Alcatraz Island in hopes of neutralizing a terrorist threat, Face/Off, a John Woo film where he plays both a hero and a villain, and World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's film regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks. He had a small but notable role as the Chinese criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu in Rob Zombie's fake trailer Werewolf Women of the S.S. from the B-movie double feature Grindhouse.

In recent years, Cage has experimented in other fields besides acting. He made his directorial debut with Sonny, a low-budget drama starring James Franco as a male prostitute whose mother (Brenda Blethyn) serves as his pimp. Cage had a small role in the grim film, which received poor reviews and a short run in a limited number of theatres. Cage's producing career included Shadow of the Vampire, the first film from Saturn Films, a company he founded with partner Jeff Levine. It was nominated for an Academy Award. He also produced The Life of David Gale, a death penalty-themed thriller with Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet.

In early December 2006, Cage announced at the Bahamas International Film Festival that he planned to curtail his future acting endeavors in order to pursue other interests. Cage said, "I feel I've made a lot of movies already and I want to start exploring other opportunities that I can apply myself to, whether it's writing or other interests that I may develop". Cage is listed as the executive producer of the The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi Channel. In November 2007, Cage was spotted backstage at a Ring of Honor wrestling show in New York City researching his role for the upcoming movie "The Wrestler". Cage will star in a sci-fi thriller titled Knowing directed by Alex Proyas, which was to begin production on March 17 2008, in Melbourne, Australia. He will play a teacher who examines the contents of a time capsule unearthed at his son's elementary school. Startling predictions found inside the capsule that have already come true lead him to believe the world is going to end at the close of the week, and that he and his son are somehow involved in the destruction.

In his early 20s, he dated actress Elizabeth Daily for two years, and was later involved with Uma Thurman. In 1988, Cage began dating Christina Fulton, mother of their son, Weston Coppola Cage (b. 26 December 1990); Weston appeared in Cage's film Lord of War as Vladimir, a young Ukrainian mechanic who quickly disarms a Mil Mi-24 helicopter. Weston is also a devoted fan of heavy metal and on April 16, 2008, he introduced the symphonic black metal band Dimmu Borgir before they played a show at The Grove in Anaheim, California.

Cage has been married three times, Patricia Arquette (married on April 8, 1995 - divorce finalized May 18, 2001) Cage proposed to her on the day he met her in the early 80s. Arquette thought he was strange, but played along with his antics by creating a list of things Cage would have to do to "win her hand", including obtaining the autograph of reclusive author J.D. Salinger. However, when he seriously started working through the list of demands, Arquette became scared and avoided him. They met again many years later and went on to marry. Lisa Marie Presley (married on August 10, 2002 and separated after four months in December 2002; their divorce was finalized on May 16, 2004) - the daughter of Elvis Presley, of whom Cage is a fan and based his performance in Wild at Heart on. He later said they shouldn't have been married in the first place. Alice Kim, a former waitress who previously worked at the Los Angeles restaurant Kabuki, met Cage at Los Angeles based Korean Nightclub, Le Prive. She is mother to his son, Kal-El (born October 3, 2005). She had a minor role in the 2007 movie Next which he produced. They were married at a private ranch in Northern California on July 30, 2004. Cage had a Malibu home where he and Alice lived, but in 2004 he bought a property on Paradise Island, Bahamas. In 2005, he sold his Malibu home for $10 million. In May 2006, he bought a 40-acre island in the Exuma archipelago, some 85 miles southeast of Nassau and close to a similar island owned by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

On July 19, 2006, Cage bought the medieval castle of Schloss Neidstein (see de:Schloss Neidstein) in the Oberpfalz region in Germany. His grandmother was German, living in Cochem an der Mosel. In August 2007, Cage purchased a home in Middletown, Rhode Island. The 24,000-square foot, brick-and-stone country manor, on 26 secluded acres, has 120 bedrooms, 46 full bathrooms and sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean from its perch bordering the Norman Bird Sanctuary. The sale ranks among the state - most expensive residential purchases, eclipsed by the $17.15 million sale last December of the Miramar mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Also in 2007, the actor purchased Midford Castle in Somerset, England. The name of his son, Kal El, comes from the Superman comic books. Kal El is Superman's birthname on the planet Krypton. He was once attached to play Superman in a film to be directed by Tim Burton. Nicolas was director Sam Raimi's first choice to play Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in the movie Spider-Man. He has even created a comic book, with his son Weston, called Voodoo Child, which is published by Virgin Comics.