Nicolas Cage Changes His Name And Gives Colorful Reason

The revelation emerged in an interview posted on Wednesday. Marlow Stern asked Cage, who was born Nicolas Kim Coppola, about one of his inspirations being the comic book superhero Luke Cage.

“Is it strange to still be known as Nicolas Cage?” the reporter asked.

“No. I am Nick Cage,” he replied. “I changed my name legally last year. I’m Nick Cage in life, and I’m Nick Cage on camera. ’Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else’s, so I decided I’m going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.’”

The “Leaving Las Vegas” Oscar winner ― whose uncle is “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola and aunt is “Rocky” star Talia Shire ― explained his now-real name.

“Cage is a name that I liked coming across in the comics — I just thought he had a cool name — and I grew up in a very avant-garde, artsy family and there was talk about John Cage and the experimental compositions that he did,” the “Surfer” actor continued. “I was looking for something like ‘James Dean’; I was looking for something short and sweet. I thought, well, I’ll keep the name Nicolas because my father [the late professor August Coppola] named me Nicolas — with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an ‘h.’ I don’t know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.”

The actor then made it clear that he can still be called Nicolas or Nick because “people know me as both.”