I’m Nick Cage Now - Nicolas Cage Explains Why He Finally Made His Stage Name Official
Nicolas Cage has officially made the name the world knows him by his legal identity too.
The Oscar-winning actor recently revealed that he legally changed his name to Nicolas Cage last year, fully stepping away from his birth name, Nicolas Kim Coppola.
Speaking in a new interview with Variety, the 62-year-old said the decision came from wanting to create his own path instead of being tied to one of Hollywood’s most famous families.
“I am Nick Cage,” he said. “I changed my name legally last year.”
Cage explained that he wanted to stand on his own rather than constantly be viewed through the lens of the Coppola dynasty.
“‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else’s,” he said. “So I decided I’m going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.’”
The actor’s famous relatives include legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, actress Talia Shire, director Sofia Coppola and actor Jason Schwartzman.
Cage said the surname “Cage” was inspired partly by Marvel character Luke Cage and also by avant-garde composer John Cage. He wanted something simple and memorable, similar to classic stars like James Dean.
At the same time, he kept “Nicolas” because it was the name his father gave him, even though he joked that people constantly spell it wrong.
“My father named me Nicolas with French spelling,” he said. “Everybody adds an ‘h.’ I don’t know why he gave me the French spelling, but he did.”
The actor added that he doesn’t mind whether people call him Nick or Nicolas.
“I’m both,” he said. “I think people know me as both.”
Although audiences have known him professionally as Nicolas Cage for decades, he admitted the attention around the Coppola name became frustrating early in his career.
While filming Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he recalled strangers constantly making references to his uncle’s famous movie Apocalypse Now.
People would repeat lines from the film to him on set, and eventually he decided he wanted distance from the family connection.
“I decided I don’t need this,” he said in an earlier interview with Wired. “And I changed it to Cage.”
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