When Francis Ford Coppola cast his own daughter as the doomed offspring in Godfather III, people doubted his sanity. So great was the disparity in the penultimate scene between Al Pacino’s monstrous scream of grief and Sofia Coppola’s unguarded, Valley Girl-inflected death, that it effectively capsized the movie, dashed whatever dreams she’d entertained of acting and gave the world its next Coppola-surnamed director. But the other side of that impulse — Francis Coppola’s spontaneous visionary instinct — was Nicolas Cage.
Known merely as Coppola’s nephew when he was first cast in Rumble Fish (he changed his name to Cage for his next film, Valley Girl), and given his first meaty role as a psychotic gangster in Coppola’s The Cotton Club, Cage was destined for a career as a quirky second banana to the likes of Sean Penn in Racing with the Moon and Matthew Modine in Birdy — until Coppola cast him as the lead in Peggy Sue Got Married. What followed is one of the most eccentric leading-man careers in Hollywood history. Consider his best-known roles: a living Warner Bros. cartoon in Raising Arizona; an operatic, one-handed mythological beast in Moonstruck; Vampire’s Kiss, where he swallowed a live cockroach on-camera (twice, if you count the first take); David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, where he channeled the spirit of Elvis; and finally Leaving Las Vegas, where his otherworldly rhythm left him almost floating on air, and for which he won an Academy Award.
That all changed with Jerry Bruckheimer’s The Rock, which made Cage into a new kind of action hero. Although Con Air featured a literate script and an indie cast, and Face/Off came from the fabled John Woo, there were too many movie-star vehicles that followed — City of Angels, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Family Man, Tim Burton’s abortive Superman — all of which conspired to earn him $20 million a picture, perhaps, but seemed to deliver diminishing returns. His last two films, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Windtalkers, again with Woo, were barely seen. And with his long engagement and four-month marriage to Elvis Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie, many feared that at age thirty-nine, after forty films, the eccentric side of his personality was taking over his personal life.
Now, coming off a year in which he gave two of the best performances of his career — both in Adaptation, the onion-like Charlie Kaufman/Spike Jonze confection in which he played a tortured screenwriter and his goofy brother, resulting in a trifecta of Best Actor nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globes and Oscars — it looks like the old Nicolas Cage is back with a vengeance. His Saturn Pictures has become a respected producing shingle, turning out the art-house hit Shadow of the Vampire and the Alan Parker-directed The Life of David Gale, a mainstream studio thriller. He recently made his directing debut with Sonny, the bleak story of a former male hustler pulled back into the Bourbon Street flesh trade by his needy madam mother. His next role will be as an obsessive-compulsive con man in Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men. And despite the death of Superman, it looks like the longtime comic- book collector may finally get his wish to play a superhero: Saturn is producing Ghost Rider, based on a Marvel Comics character distinguished by the fact that his head becomes a flaming skull when he rides his armored motorcycle.

Congratulations on all of the recent accolades for your performance in Adaptation. Thank you.

Amidst the interesting acting roles you’ve been taking recently, you’re also directing, producing and creating your own media company… Why put on these other hats, and why now? My company, Saturn, has been around now for over five years, so it isn’t really a decision I came up with recently, but it was something I felt would allow me to access other abilities that I believed I had that were not being utilized as an actor. For example, I always felt I had an eye for talent. But as an actor, I’m really only responsible for managing my own abilities. I remember when I met Johnny Depp, he was a guitar player from Florida, and he had no idea he could be an actor. I said, “I really think you are an actor, that you have that ability.” That was just from playing one game of Monopoly with him. I sent him to my agent and he has gone on to carve out a successful career. This isn’t something I was able to utilize as an actor.
When I opened my production company, I thought, “This will be a chance to match talent and see what generates from those matchings.” Like in Shadow of the Vampire, where I was able to put two of my favorite actors together from very unique and different theatre groups, the Wooster Group and Steppenwolf — Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich. I don’t know why they’d never worked together before, but I thought they would be stunning together. So that was exciting. Also, I was looking at various obscure films for talent, and saw Elias Merhiges’s The Begotten. I felt it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I thought he would be a really good choice for directing. This was a chance to surround myself with creative people, to have relationships with them. It’s like the old days in the French salons, [where] you could stimulate yourself as an artist by talking to other artists. That was my thinking in starting a production company… plus the hope of having material ready to go when I was ready to play a part or direct. If I was in a certain place in my life where I thought [it] would be a good time to do a romantic comedy, or a drama or action film, I would have them ready to go, so I wouldn’t be waiting for that project to come in. I’d be able to determine on my own when to play it or not.

When building an eclectic company like Saturn, do you choose blockbusters to act in so that you can take chances on smaller pictures?  That is one of those necessary aspects of the business. If you want to be cast, it is somewhat important to have what is considered bankability. I always thought that if I could prove myself in the larger and more entertaining films, then I would be able to work with someone like Martin Scorsese. I could help get his film green-lit. The key to me was to know when to take advantage of the opportunity when it came in, as a result of whatever else I had done in terms of building bankability.

Has part of your motivation, in having a company like Saturn, been to hedge against getting older, when leading-man jobs are harder to come by? Not so much in the vein that I think I’m going to get older and not going to be able to play these parts. At least, not yet. It’s more to do with… maybe I should take more time in between parts. And that it might not be a bad thing for me to have a company where I can go to the office and make phone calls and meet people that are interesting, to try and find projects for other people to do. That way I don’t have to constantly be acting [in] back-to-back [projects].

How do you know when you’re working too much? There was a time when it seemed like every film featured either you or John Travolta. Is switching genres a smart hedge against that? There is a method of thought that says it’s better to stay mysterious, make yourself an event so when you come out, people have a hunger to see you again. I can think of some superstars who adopt that principle, where they are very selective. But we are all going to get older, and there is something to be said about doing some of your best work when you are younger, when you still have that virility, something visceral and raw. I’ve heard there have been some actors who’ve regretted not doing more work when they were under fifty. And I look at some actors who work a lot, like [Sir] Michael Caine. To me, he’s always an event. He’s always interesting to watch; always a devoted actor. Frankly, I never get tired of seeing him. That school of thought goes back to the contract players in the “golden age” like Humphrey Bogart. When he was asked how it was that he’d made so many great movies, he’d say, “I never stopped working.” There are so many methods of thought that it’s hard to say which is right. For me, right now, I’m going to be very careful and selective, and only do things that really speak to my heart.

Kevin Spacey’s production company recently got into the online screenwriter business... How will Saturn evolve? Norm [Golightly] and I are talking a lot about integrating a comic-book company into Saturn. Maybe, at some point, music.

You’ve been selling your comic-book collection. Is that a function of getting older? In some way, it’s a maturing process of streamlining. I’m trying not to get so hung up on collecting so much. Trying to be a bit more careful with spending, things like that.

You have been touted as the star of Iron Man, Hellblazer, Constantine and Superman, only to have each of those fall apart. Are we ever going to see you play a superhero? Yeah, probably one day. I have always admired comic book-based movies because they go into the fantasy realm. And [the fact that] you’re not necessarily having to kill people with guns. [Comic book-based movies] have the appeal of the child’s mind. It is good entertainment in the truest sense of the word. I have been approached and talked about playing Superman and some of those other characters, but for some reason, it never seems to work out. It always falls apart. That’s OK. I’m not surprised by the success of comic-book films; I always knew it was going to happen. Especially in these times, when the world is so unhappy with war and struggle. That’s why Superman was invented — it was originally a reaction to fascism. Now we’re in difficult times again, and I think we’ll see more people gravitate toward fantasy heroes. There is one character I’m in discussions to play, and I have a feeling that might happen.

Superman got very close before falling apart. Being a big comic-book collector, was that a major disappointment? It was just unfortunate. I really wanted Tim Burton, and we had a pretty exciting rapport together. I was really up for his vision. I guess the script just became, in Warner Bros.’ mind, too expensive. They just didn’t think it was ready yet, and it didn’t happen. These things happen for a reason. I can’t say that maybe in some way, I wasn’t relieved too. I had some pretty unusual ideas for Superman, and that would have been a hard bulls-eye to hit. So many people care so much about that character and my approach was definitely not going to be like the others you’ve seen. I was going to focus on his feelings of insecurity; that he was an alien trying to fit in society. I thought that so many children in the world have those feelings of insecurity: trying to fit in at school, trying to belong to groups. If they could see that Superman was the same way, that might give them a bit of faith in themselves; that they could be Superman in their own way.

Sonny was a script you eyed for a long time. For a while you even expected to play the young hustler yourself. Why did it stick with you to the point that you directed and produced it? I had been reading a lot of scripts at the time I first read this one. The first thing that popped out at me was that it was just so different. I gravitate toward things that are a little bit different. I thought it dealt with flawed people — outlaws, if you will. I like situations that are extreme, where people either surmount or can’t surmount flaws or problems in their lives. It’s applicable to everyone, on some level. But I couldn’t find a director to make the movie with me. This was fifteen years ago. Barbet Schroeder almost did it, but decided to do Barfly instead. The picture was shelved, disappeared. Even before it came to me, it went to Richard Gere, but he decided to do American Gigolo instead. Then it was just there, on the L.A. Times list of best scripts that had never been made into a movie. It just disappeared.
I went on my own path, made other movies, forgot about it. I didn’t think about it again until two years ago, when I got the notion of directing. I didn’t know what I wanted to direct. I had some idea that it should be smaller, character-driven, about acting, and people — perhaps a family. I knew it would have to be something different to match my sensibilities.
I was in bed, and suddenly this light went off, and I remembered that script. It was called “Folks” at the time. I asked Norm Golightly, my partner at Saturn Films, to see if it was out there. It was. I read it again, went through all the same emotions again. I optioned it, to have in the company. I still didn’t know if I was going to direct or just produce it. I finished Adaptation, and felt ready to go to the next level. I found myself not working because of the threat of a Writers Guild strike. I had this six-month window before I had to do another movie. I said, “Let’s go ahead and do this now.” Then my other movie, Constantine, fell apart. That gave me even more time to work on it.

Have you always wanted to direct? No, I really haven’t. I was pretty content with acting. I believe, though, that at a certain point, you can get too comfortable doing something. In an effort to reinvent oneself, to grow or learn something, you have to branch out. Producing was like testing the waters for directing. It got me to a place where I wasn’t afraid to fail. To try and be naked in my work, to go along on the high wire. What finally pushed me over was that I came to a conclusion that everything is really instinct. I decided not to get too caught up in where to put the camera, to just rely on some instinct. That helped me make my decisions.

Was there a moment filming Sonny when you had to stop and ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing?!” Or did it all feel natural to you? It felt pretty natural. It all seemed to come together extremely quickly. After the first few days, we all found a rhythm together that didn’t stop until the shoot finished. It was a rhythm that was powered by adrenaline, because I was excited to be doing this. I would make my notes the night before, try to think about all the characters and what they were feeling. It was odd. With Adaptation, I played twin brothers, and I had to really use that. I had to think and feel as one brother, then get outside my head and be objective enough to recall what I had done as the one brother in order to act as the other brother. Then I had to not allow any residual behavior of the one brother to go onto the other brother when I was switching over, which happened four or five times a day. I used that as a tool — it helped me with directing, [where] you are responsible for more than one character trajectory. Usually as an actor, you’re only responsible for one. That got me into a multidimensional thought process. So with Harry Dean [Stanton] or Brenda [Blethyn], I would go from male to female, try to get into their heads, understand what it was each of them wanted. When they were on, I’d try to feel it with them.

You did such a magnificent job keeping Charlie Kaufman and his brother feeling like different characters in Adaptation. Did it take a long time to get each character down? It happened in a three-week rehearsal process. I was with Spike [Jonze], and we went through videotaped improvisations together. Sometimes we would improvise Charlie at a party. Then we would improvise Donald at a party. Or what kind of conversations they would have with their mother. We’d try to find how they talked or walked, what would their body language be like. I figured that Donald’s posture would be a little better than Charlie’s because he was OK with who he was in the world — he had a girlfriend, he met people well. Whereas Charlie could not meet people well; he was more closed off and introverted. He’d be a bit more caved in. The key was to try making the brothers different enough that you knew who was who when he was on, but not so different that it lapsed into slapstick or gimmickry.

For a guy who once pulled a tooth out for your role in Birdy and ate a live cockroach for Vampire’s Kiss, you seem to have become pretty grounded and mature. Do you not have to go to those extremes anymore to effectively play a character? What happens is, you become different people in your path as an actor. When I was doing those things, I was a very new actor. I didn’t have a lot of training, and I was trying to make some sort of impact, because that was what was important for me at the time — to get on the map. There were things I would do that were more shocking, or approaches I would do to try and live the character, because I didn’t have the training. But then, as I went on, I started to find other methods, ways to get into characters that weren’t exactly destroying my life.

Can you give an example? This is the theatre of imagination. That’s what acting is about: utilizing imagination to believe that you’re in that part; that you’re really there. You can get there by taking a little extra time to put your wardrobe on in the morning, letting that uniform sit on you, and bring back any sense memory of the work you’d done the day before. You feel the character, and you can stay in character on the set. You don’t need to bring it home with you, don’t need to change your personal life just because that’s what the character is going through in the movie. But that’s not to say that every time I go into a movie, I don’t wonder what the heck I’m doing. I still go through all those nervous shenanigans, about how will I ever pull off this part — especially if I care a lot about it.

Was this new approach prompted by a specific incident, like eating the bug or having teeth pulled without anesthesia, or a film that left you particularly drained? It was more a function of maturity, of learning to let go. When I did Vampire’s Kiss, I got so wound up. It was so important to me that this vision I had of Peter Lowe’s character get on film exactly the way that I wanted it, that I frankly don’t think I was very easy for anyone to live with. Certainly, [I was] not easy for myself to live with. I remember that I wasn’t drinking or anything at the time. One night I felt so wound up that I was about to snap. I ordered a martini. And I just relaxed, and I could tell my body really needed a rest. From then on, I learned you can do good work without torturing yourself.

Particularly when you are rewarded for turning yourself inside out by discovering that the film company puts a stupid photo of you in a cape and fangs on the cover of the video box. You give your all, and you’re at the mercy of people who could care less about the integrity you invested in a performance. That was the worst. That really broke me. I couldn’t believe that happened and I made it a personal goal that one day, I would get that damn stupid cape and fangs off my image on that video. I finally succeeded, when MGM re-released it and I did a two-hour voiceover narration with the director, Robert Bierman. Partly because I wanted to get that fixed. It took me that long to do it, but I did it.

The length of time it took to make Sonny kept you from playing the title hustler role. You’ve long been involved in a planned movie about Lou Zamperini, the Olympic athlete who became a POW in World War II and was tormented by a Japanese captor. Antoine Fuqua might now direct it, but are you too old to play the lead? I’m not sure. I would consider starring in that. I wouldn’t play the lead if I wasn’t right for it, much the same way that I didn’t think I was right to play Sonny, at this point.

You’ve starred in enough action blockbusters to be considered a viable action star. But most of those guys rarely stray from type, and it doesn’t sound like you relish that kind of a career. I was interested in it because I wasn’t comfortable with it. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being in an action movie. And so, for me, that became the challenge. When people say you can’t do something, it kind of makes you want to do it. I thought, “Is there something I can do with this world-stage genre that does get out to lot of people around the world, that seems to translate well overseas?” [In other words] can I try to bring the acting I’d done in Vampire’s Kiss, let’s say, to a movie like Face/Off? And use the independent experiences I had almost like a laboratory to experiment and record what I had discovered, then possibly use it again in a different genre and make that work there too? I’m not entirely sure you could succeed at that; it was just sort of a thought process I was going through.

While you were doing action films like Con Air, The Rock or Face/Off, did you find the makers of those films trying to put you back into the cookie-cutter action-character mode? You seemed different, more vulnerable and sympathetic than some actors who play those roles. I remember there were a couple of tense moments there. The Rock seemed to flow pretty well. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay wanted that character to be a fish out of water. That seemed to be something you could create a lot of humor with. That’s why they cast me. They saw the character more as an Everyman, and not a standard hero. That made the transition of that character easier. But by the time I got into Con Air, I had a very specific idea for that character. I wanted a Southern accent. I wanted the long hair, a beard; I wanted this guy to be a physical threat. I remember Jerry being pretty concerned about it. We’d have a lot of talks about it and I stuck to my guns. The one thing I gave up on was the beard. I kept thinking at the time the studio was scared of my look. I’d put on so much muscle for the part that they thought it looked like I was too scary.

That was a fairly standard action film, but you were surrounded by a “who’s who” of indie actors, from Malkovich to [Steve] Buscemi and [John] Cusack. One of the things I like about Jerry is he always looks for talent in interesting places. He likes independent actors and he likes the cred that gives his big commercial movies. Also, the experience on Face/Off was probably my most successful rapport with any action director. John [Woo] really did seem to encourage me to go to places that were not standard. Anything I did more extreme, he seemed to be more happy with. I definitely was able to experiment more easily with him.

What genres most accurately reflect your own sensibilities? Mainstream stuff or movies like Leaving Las Vegas and Sonny? My deeper sensibilities go toward the ones that are more introverted, more complex. That would be Sonny. But I also have this other side to me that wants to get out of that from time to time, go into big entertainment and express myself in a humorous way that might be more or less challenging for people to stomach.

You cover a wider range of genres than most male movie stars. Is the preparation the same, whether a comedy or drama? Do you do a lot of research for each specific role? I like to think that not only do the styles change or genres change, the approaches can change, and the preparation can change. I never really want to get comfortable with what I’m doing. If I’m uncomfortable, then I stand the chance of doing something truthful and naked. If I get too comfortable, it can lapse into laziness, and I start to stagnate. Whenever I feel that happening, I try to find something that is an extreme challenge.

Are there any genres you haven’t explored, as an actor, that are imminent? Sci-fi is interesting to me; it’s a pretty creative and fertile genre because you can do so many things with it. I like to imagine what Shakespeare might have done with the concept of cloning. I’m not sure specifically what I’ll do next. I’m wide open. I hope [Sonny] is not the last movie I direct, either.

In your next film, Matchstick Men, you play an obsessive-compulsive con artist who discovers he has a teenage daughter who gets drawn into his scams. What was the big lure for you in taking the role? The chance to work with Ridley Scott was the main draw for me. But when I began to look at possibilities with the part, I saw there was room for some pretty interesting behavior. It was a delicate balancing act. Ridley always saw it as a comedy, whereas I don’t find obsessive-compulsive disorder funny at all. Not to say he does either, but we had to try and find a balance there, where we could have the character be engaging to watch, and have humorous moments occur because of his condition. But we never wanted to be laughing at him or at the condition he had. It was more like seeing the humor, but not wanting to bum everybody out with someone who has a very hard affliction to live with.

You research your roles rigorously. But obsessive-compulsive disorder seems like something you’d want to know a bit about. You might find yourself falling into it. Did you find out that you have any obsessive-compulsive traits? The more I read and researched, the more I became aware that some of those obsessions, those worries and loops, were definitely a part of me. I never went into the cleaning rituals that a lot of these people do. But I’ve definitely gone into these ruminating rituals at times, where you can’t shake an idea from entering your head. Most actors have that, to some extent. The irony is, most creative people have it. It’s like a lack of inhibition, a lack of impulse control. They are breaking through the wall to create something, but it manifests itself in their physical body language. It can manifest itself on a larger scale, in terms of creating a work of art.

Adaptation came on the heels of two high-profile disappointments at the box office, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Windtalkers. When you have two in a row with good creative elements that don’t fly at the box office, do you feel the pressure? It certainly didn’t feel good. But I made the movies for the right reasons. I liked the idea of working with [directors] John Madden and John Woo. Both characters seemed to me to be challenges and things I could grow from. At the end of the day, I just have to do the best job I can, and whatever happens happens. You just keep working.

You’ve done two movies with John Woo, who has said you personify in his Hollywood films the virtue and heroism that Chow Yun-Fat gave his Hong Kong films. I’d hoped I could be that for him. I love Chow Yun-Fat. He’s a great presence. I was almost going to work with him in one of John’s next pictures, but because of what happened with Windtalkers, I think everything just stopped. I don’t think we have any plans to work again.