Nicolas Cage is not just a stage name.
The Oscar-winning actor, who was born Nicolas Coppola and is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, revealed he legally changed his name to Nicolas Cage.
The name was originally inspired by the Marvel Comics character Luke Cage and the composer John Cage. Asked in an interview with Variety if it’s “strange” to still go by a stage name, the actor said, “No. I am Nick Cage.”
“I changed my name legally last year,” he said. “I’m Nick Cage in life, and I’m Nick Cage on camera.”
Cage said he prefers forging his own identity with his family rather than be on the outskirts of another.
“‘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,’” he said.
Reflecting on the origin of the name, Cage said he was looking for something “short and sweet,” like James Dean.
“‘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 actor said.
“I thought, well, I’ll keep the name ‘Nicolas’ because my father 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,” he added.
Cage has been open about why he decided not to use the name Coppola during his career. In 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” he was credited as Nicolas Coppola, but people kept connecting him to his uncle and one of the famous lines from his movie “Apocalypse Now.”
“People would not stop saying things like, ‘I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning’ because of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ when Robert Duvall said, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’” Cage told Wired in 2022. “And it made it hard to work and I said, ‘I don’t need this.’”
Cage will make the jump to the small screen in his newest project, playing Ben Reilly/The Spider in “Spider-Noir,” now available on Prime Video. He previously voiced Spider-Man Noir in the 2018 movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Cage will also star in the upcoming biopic of late NFL head coach and color commentator John Madden.
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