Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage is an American actor and producer whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly his 1996 Best Actor Academy Award win for Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas. He was born Nicolas Kim Coppola on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California, into the American Coppola filmmaking family. His father August Coppola was a comparative-literature professor and the older brother of director Francis Ford Coppola, and his mother Joy Vogelsang was a choreographer-and-dancer. He is the cousin of director Sofia Coppola and actor Jason Schwartzman. He adopted the stage name Nicolas Cage in 1983 (derived from the Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage and from American avant-garde composer John Cage).

His 1982 first feature-film appearance in Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (in which he played Brad's Bud) and his subsequent 1983 first lead-role feature-film appearance in Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl launched his early-career American film public profile. His 1987 lead role as Ronny Cammareri in Norman Jewison's Moonstruck (alongside Cher and Olympia Dukakis) launched his late-1980s American film public profile.

His 1995 lead role as alcoholic former Hollywood-screenwriter Ben Sanderson in Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas won him the 1996 Best Actor Academy Award. His subsequent late-1990s American film career produced multiple defining American action-genre films — particularly Michael Bay's The Rock (1996, alongside Sean Connery), Simon West's Con Air (1997), and John Woo's Face/Off (1997, opposite John Travolta).

His subsequent feature-film career has produced multiple American films — particularly Spike Jonze's Adaptation (2002, in which he played twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman, earning his second Best Actor Academy Award nomination), Brett Ratner's Family Man (2000), Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure (2004) and the 2007 sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Michael Sarnoski's Pig (2021). His 2022 lead role as a fictionalized Nicolas Cage in Tom Gormican's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent produced his later American film public profile. He has been married five times — to Patricia Arquette (1995–2001), Lisa Marie Presley (2002–2004), Alice Kim (2004–2016), Erika Koike (2019, annulled four days after the wedding), and Riko Shibata (2021–present). He has three children.

His name Nicolas derives from the Greek Nikolaos meaning "victory of the people." Nicolas was a popular American boys' name across the late 20th century.