Actor Nicolas Cage was never who people thought he was. And preconceptions annoy him.
For a long time Cage has played oddballs flailing away on the fringe of society: the slow-witted Sailor in “Wild at Heart,” the hillbilly baby-stealer in “Raising Arizona,” the street smart hood in “Amos & Andrew.”
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But he isn’t anything like those characters. Cage was raised in Long Beach and San Francisco, the son of a comparative literature teacher. Although he left school at 17 and speaks with a labored cadence, Cage is as bright as any valedictorian.
As the nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, you’d think that his youth was filled with catered birthday parties and 500SLs. Not so, he said.
“My dad had a teacher’s salary and at that time it was $5,000 to $10,000 a year and we had some tough times,” Cage said.
“It was frustrating to me when people would say, `You’re Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew; why don’t you drive a sports car here?’ I didn’t have money. And that kind of pre-determined idea of what I had when I didn’t have it frustrated me, I guess. That happened at a very early age.”
Cage’s family connections made him uneasy. And it was because of those ties that he deliberately sought out the quirky roles.
“I guess I’ve always been attracted to characters in bad situations and tried to give them some kind of dignity even though all the chips are against them and they’re pretty down-and-out,” he said.
At 29, Cage’s gallery of remarkable rogues crowd his resume: Cher’s one-handed lover in “Moonstruck,” the Vietnam vet in “Birdy” and the frantic husband in “Honeymoon in Vegas” all bear the off-center Cage touch.
Cage admitted that he himself has been a square-peg guy in a round-hole world. “I’ve always wanted to go against whatever was the norm,” he said.
But Cage has a 2-year-old son now, and things are different.
Cage thinks he’s more people-oriented now. “I feel more like I’m a member of a community. Before I felt like I was this pretentious, serious dramatic actor and `Don’t talk to me, I’m thinking.’ And I didn’t really care about my community. Now-maybe because I’m a parent-I worry about the community. I think I’ve calmed down a lot.”