Nic is the nephew of the esteemed Francis Ford Coppola. But he refused to ride the coattails of fame, getting along by his uncle's genius and subscribing to the expectations that came with the legendary, so he re-named himself. He took the name Cage from a comic book hero, Luke Cage, and famed composer, John Cage.
Some of Nic's movies have a touch of Elvis, whom Nic has been assigned fanatic to (though this is a myth); he actually uses a technique called 'art synthesis,' wherein he melds media as part of his distinctive style: In Wild at Heart (a film by the brilliant David Lynch, who uses Nic in other works, as well), Sailor Ripley speaks in an Elvis velvet and sings to his girl, Lula, in a stunning impersonation at the films end; in Honeymoon in Vegas, Nic's Jack Singer gets caught up in a strategy to get back his fianc', whom he has gambled away, by jumping out a plane with a group of Flying Elvises; and in Peggy Sue Got Married he is a bastardized Elvis sort, as a quirky, nasal singing star hopeful, Charlie Bodell.
Nic is such a dedicated actor that he embraces the character and the part: he lived in his car to be a convincing rebellious Randy in Valley Girl; he ate a live cockroach (a huge one!) to be a convincing executive-turned-vampire in Vampire's Kiss; he bulked up for his role as the platitude-spouting thug, Little Junior Brown in Kiss of Death; and he befriended and followed the lifestyle of an alcoholic (an alcohol 'coach') to play Ben Sanderson, a man whose only goal is to drink himself to death, in Leaving Las Vegas.
What makes Nicolas Cage an icon goes beyond his looks, his voice, his idiosyncrasies, style, and quirks. He has always been known to be intense, wild, even iconoclastic. And at his start in Hollywood he was sometimes received poorly, seen as over the top. (Think about his histrionics in Honeymoon in Vegas, for example, or his maudlin malcontentment, which he shares in great self-pitying soliloquies, holding up his wooden hand and screaming how he cut off his hand for his bride and his brother.)But forging on, in characteristic ignorance of the nay-sayers, Nicolas Cage, the sometimes surreal other times downright silly renderer of odd or ordinary men, relentlessly held to his practice of acting, and won the Academy Award. He did it in spite of and at risk to the odds. This alone is enough to make any fanatic swoon more than usual, worship at the Nic shrine, and even, if she's nutty enough, to attempt to contact him'a real person with hyper-real appeal.
And you know what? Nicolas Cage wouldn't shame those of us who are obsessed. For he has had his own (questionable) obsessions. He admits it. That's also what I loooove about him. Even if I can't talk to him on the phone.
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