The actor who won an oscar for playing a suicidal alcoholic in a small, dark movie describes the joys of playing action heroes in big-budget movies like this summer's Snake Eyes. While he's at it, he explains why he's a Coppola and a Cage, and confesses his unease with Superman's underpants.
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Nicolas Cage is sitting in a high canvas-backed chair with the name Tom Welles printed on the back. He's alone in the corner of a parking lot outside a closed-set warehouse in downtown L.A. where he and Joaquin Phoenix are shooting 8mm. He looks worn out, like he's been up most of the night, or perhaps because he's made so many films back-to-back since winning the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas two years ago. There were the three action films--_The Rock_, Con Air and Face/Off--followed by City of Angels and then Snake Eyes, which opens this summer. The 34-year-old actor wishes he could be more specific about his current role in 8mm, but can only say of his character, "He's Everyman, an ordinary man who gets pushed into very extraordinary situations and then becomes extraordinary."
In that case, Cage is playing someone who's the inverse of himself. Born into the extraordinary Coppola family, young Nicolas had an upbringing that was hardly ordinary. He grew up with a famous uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, and an intense, intellectual academic father who did things like enroll his son for fourth grade in a Japanese school because he thought it was important to know the language. Nicolas eventually set out to cast his own shadow, and, changing his name to Cage, pursued an extremist style of acting in small, quirky films like Valley Girl, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Vampire's Kiss and Wild at Heart. Only now with fatherhood, marriage and critical and box-office success under his belt is Cage remotely chilled out enough to take on an "Everyman" role. Of course, the big film he has coming up suggests we shouldn't be fooled that he's a regular guy--he'll be playing the title role in Tim Burton's Superman.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: You look a bit fatigued, like your pet died or something. Is it this film that has gotten to you?
NICOLAS CAGE: It's funny you should say that. What can I tell you about last night? A baby loon was abandoned in front of my house at the beach. It was covered in tar. I put it in my pool, and it just dove down under the water--it was like God's art. It became the most elegant seal and then it came back up and it was happy for a minute. I called the animal rescue agency and they said to get it out of the pool because the chlorine was no good for the feathers. So I put it in the bathtub, which was too cold, and it was shivering. I finally got it to the pet hospital. By then I was attached to the bird. Loons in China are pets, and I had this poetic fantasy of having this loon as a pet. The hospital made it clear to me that if they couldn't cure it to send it back to the wild, they would put it to sleep. I asked if I could have it as a pet and they said they weren't allowed to do that. I left, but kept thinking: I don't know who these people are. What if they put it to sleep because it's a baby? So I went back at 11 p.m. and told them if they couldn't help the bird, then don't put it down, call me. I'd like to take care of it. He said they wouldn't put it down. I called them at seven the next morning and they said they put the bird in the incubator and tried to feed it, but it died.
Q: No wonder you look the way you do. Do you have any other wild animal stories?
A: I do. I was once surrounded by rattlesnakes in a rattlesnake patch with my cousin Roman when we were 16 or 17. We were fishing in Napa Valley and walked right into it. There was a huge one coiled in front of us. A bigger one, to the left, was uncoiled, so I knew he wasn't a problem. We had to go over the coiled one, so we felt trapped and paralyzed with fear. There was nowhere to run, we were surrounded. I saw this pole with a nail through it, and I knew that I had to do something, so I grabbed the pole and pounded the snake. Then it came up and started rattling and was about to strike. I killed it, but felt bad about it. I felt anything you kill you've got to eat, so I took it home, cut the poison glands out, took the rattles off and cooked it.
Q: What was your cousin doing during this battle?
A: He was just standing there watching me.
Q: Was that the scariest thing that ever happened to you?
A: One of them.
Q: What would be scarier than that?
A: Years ago I was driving a car I'd bought, an Austin Healey with a V-8 engine, sort of a makeshift Cobra. I had taken it to a mechanic to put an automatic shifter in it. The mechanic did a really sloppy job. If you barely knocked the shifter it would go into separate gears. I was driving on the Hollywood Freeway and I accidentally bumped it into park. I was doing 80 mph at 10 p.m. and I started doing 360s. I wound up facing traffic, and then a Mack truck was coming at me. I thought, This is it, I'm dead. The truck driver had a CB radio and said, "Put the car in reverse." I did and drove backwards until I got off at the exit, backwards!
Q: And since then you've gone on to purchase a Ferrari, Bentley, Corvette Sting Ray and Lamborghini. I've heard you get a ticket about every time you drive. Is that true?
A: You can be going 60 mph in a car like that and the guy in the station wagon will be going 90 and you'll get the ticket. I've been a point away from losing my license every year, so I don't really drive that much anymore.
Q: OK, time to talk about your movies. What can you tell us about the upcoming Snake Eyes, which Brian De Palma directed?
A: The movie is a classical whodunit, a suspense thriller mystery. I play a corrupt cop. It's a role with lots of dialogue, so I had to get used to talking fast, because I'm not a fast talker. My internal metronome, my cadence, is much slower. So I had to adopt the old-movie style of speaking. I had to step up to Fred MacMurray speed. All the great actors in the old days, like Cagney, talked really fast. They were good at it. When I first started doing it, it felt false. Talking fast has something to do with your brain chemistry--a lot of fast talkers are incredibly smart.
Q: I understand you chose to wear a loud, shiny suit and a Hawaiian shirt for this role.
A: They had a series of leather jackets they wanted me to wear, but I felt it was old news. I wanted this guy not to be your typical image of a New York detective, with a cigarette and a leather jacket. I wanted him to be more of a bon vivant in attitude and attire. I fell in love with this rust-colored suit, and I thought the Hawaiian shirt worked well with it. He's a man of questionable taste.
Q: In the end, what do you think of the film?
A: It works incredibly well. It's one of Brian's best movies, if not his best. I'm not given to hyperbole, so I mean it when I say that.
Q: How was it working with De Palma?
A: He's very intuitive and insightful with actors. He doesn't say much, but he knows what he wants. He lets the actors find it without micromanaging. A lot of young directors tend to get in there and micromanage a performance, which comes from an insecure place. Brian's a secure filmmaker. Once he said to me, "We got that, let's go to lunch." When we came back he wanted to do the scene again. I hadn't had time to think about it, but it felt much better, like I could hit it out of the park. I asked if that was intentional and he said, "Yeah." That's a man with almost a Zen way of directing.
Q: You just played an angel in City of Angels. Was it tougher to play an angel or a corrupt cop?
A: I put pressure on myself with City of Angels. I wanted to create a subliminal essence where you're not really sure why it's different or other, but it is. For example, I didn't want to blink. That was very hard to do and occasionally I did blink.
Q: Were you at all concerned about remaking Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire with City of Angels?
A: They're very different. Wim's movie had to do with what was going on in the minds of people in Berlin after the war. His movie is a unique masterpiece on its own. Ours borrowed the notion of angels amongst us and the style and look of the angels and their ability to read and hear thoughts. But that's as far as it went. Our love story was played up much more.
Q: The last time we talked you hadn't yet won the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. What was that night like for you?
A: I was a nervous wreck. I thought about taking something but I was afraid it might affect my timing, because I had to present as well. I had gone through this unusual series of festivals and award shows that had been a paper trail all the way up to the Oscar and people would say, "Why are you worried? Of course you're going to win, you've won everything else." But I did not know I was going to win. I'm very obsessive/compulsive, so things will stay on a loop with me. I'll keep saying, "But what if this happens?" and work myself into a state that is a force of nature. People around me have learned to deal with it. That night I was certain I was not going to win. So when it happened I was very relieved. I felt I could breathe. A friend of mine said, "Be sure that you watch what's happening to you and accept it and feel good about it." Which was good advice. So when I got up there I took a deep breath and thought, Wow, this may never happen again, so I'm gonna enjoy this.
Q: What did the note your wife wrote to you mean--"It was a win for every married couple and a celebration of marriage"?
A: To me it was just a beautiful note that meant that she loved me. Also, she gave me a kiss and her lipstick was on my face when I went up there.
Q: Did she wind up with a diamond necklace as part of that celebration?
A: I had bonuses built into my contracts that if I won I would get a certain amount of dollars. And it just so happened that the bonus they gave me for Face/Off was the exact amount of the diamonds that she was renting from Harry Winston. So I said, If I win, you're taking something home as well. I won and she's got the diamonds.
Q: You said you did Leaving Las Vegas for you, as something to be proud of. What do you say about the next three movies you did--_The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off_? Were they done for your bank account?
A: I'm proud of all those movies. I had specific reasons for doing them. I had a great experience on The Rock working with Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay and Sean Connery. Jerry especially said, "I think you can be in an action movie." I had been wanting to do them--I was weaned on James Bond and Steve McQueen movies--but there was nothing in my previous work to suggest that I could be convincing in that world. After doing The Rock, Con Air was natural for me. Jerry was involved and I wasn't going to say no to him, he did a lot for me. I've done some of my more original stuff in those films. It was a huge challenge for me. I watched all of Harrison Ford's movies and learned from him.
Q: What did you learn from Ford?
A: That you can create a character, like in The Fugitive, who's overwhelmed with emotion, or you can play a character who's a little insecure in a giant action situation and then rise to the occasion. People laugh at me and say that I didn't work as hard on Con Air as I did on Leaving Las Vegas. The truth is they're just very different. I had to find ways to be convincing in an action film. Action only gives you a certain amount of time to convey a point as an actor, so it teaches you to be succinct. That was a learning experience--finding exactly what's required for the character in each moment. The other thing I like about action is that it's pure cinema, an experience you can only get from the movies. In the end I want to try all kinds of movies. I tend to do things in threes, and for some reason I had three action movies that came along at that time.
Q: How do you make the studios happy with these big-budget films and still remain true to yourself?
A: Face/Off is the best example of that. I felt really proud of it because I was able to go back to what I had learned on Vampire's Kiss, which was sort of my experimental laboratory where I tried things out, facial expressions and attitudes. I was able to utilize that kind of acting in some of the scenes in Face/Off. [Director John] Woo just let me go for it.
Q: Did Travolta raise the bar on how you perceived this film?
A: John's a great actor and mimic. He can mime anybody. He really had me down. His delivery is more subtle than my personality, so for me it was much harder to get in synch with his vocal rhythms. I had a joy of a time working with John. I felt a kindred spirit with him, a sense of play and fun that's important to making a performance exciting.
Q: Travolta said he watched the way you walked and talked to get you down. What did you do about him?
A: He has a vocal rhythm where it's kind of like an endearing little boy, you can almost see "Don't hurt me" in quotations. And he has an innate politeness.
Q: Did you see _Face/Off _as a comedy?
A: I saw elements of it being very funny, but I also saw it as a sci-fi horror film.
Q: How much fun was it shooting a submachine gun?
A: I wouldn't say it was fun. Ever since the Brandon Lee thing I'm very nervous about guns on the set. It's something you have to treat with respect and be careful around. It makes me more on edge. Plus they're extremely loud and you have to wear stuff in your ears or you will lose your hearing.
Q: To research Con Air you got permission to walk among the prisoners at Folsom State Prison. How scary was that?
A: Very scary. Very successful. Got some good ideas talking to them, but your mind starts to trip out to the fact that you're talking to someone who's killed people. It's like you enter a black hole of sorts, where you don't really know where you are. It's quite terrifying.
Q: Jerry Bruckheimer said when you flew to Tokyo to promote Con Air you wore an orange jumpsuit and hat, with green shoes and blue sunglasses. What impression did you make on the Japanese?
A: I don't know. [Laughs] I was feeling very Warhol-esque on that day.
Q: Have you seen the double-image print of Superman that Andy Warhol did?
A: I have it. What I like so much about Warhol--and he's actually influenced my acting, especially with Wild at Heart--is that he takes these icons and makes them his own, which is a brave thing to do. With acting it's not something you're supposed to do--you're never supposed to mimic or copy another person. For Wild at Heart I thought, Let's be Elvis. I've always called that my Warhol performance, because I tried to subvert the image. Superman is a similar experience. With any luck we can be Warhol-ian about it.
Q: With Tim Burton directing and you starring, will this be a much different _Superma_n than we've seen before?
A: Quite different. There's some very exciting concepts they're coming up with in terms of the flying itself. The two major things are to make people feel like they're seeing flying, and also to give people the joy we all experience of wanting to be somebody else who's got super powers. I don't want to give too much away about my take on the character. I do want to make a statement that it's OK to be different. For children who feel out of place, like circles in a world of square pegs, I thought, Why not take the greatest icon in the world of the child, Superman, and make him different? He's from another planet, he's an alien. If Superman's different then maybe a kid who feels weird can say, "So what? I'm different, so's Superman." It's a very simple, but important, message. I haven't really made a movie that children could go see.
Q: How challenging is that Superman costume?
A: That's the biggest challenge for me. Committing to the costume. Unlike the look of Batman, which is inherently sexy because he's all in dark colors, the Superman costume can go into silliness very easily. I was afraid of wearing the red underwear, because I could never understand why he wears the underwear on the outside. I took some pictures without the underwear and I showed them to my seven-year-old son, Weston, and he said, "Where's the underwear on the outside?" I said, "I'm not going to wear it." "Why, are you embarrassed?" "Yeah." "No, Superman has to have that." So I'm back to experimenting with it. Because it is an indelible impression, something about that look worked; it's an icon that's been around at least 50 years and I don't want to mess with it.
Q: Hard to imagine you not messing with it.
A: Well, I just want to go a little bit further with the concept. He's definitely going to be an alien. What Christopher Reeve did was perfect, so what else can we do with it? It's a simple, but perfect, story. Because it has so many levels and layers to it, it has become the great myth of pop American culture. There's the whole question of adoption--he was adopted by these ordinary but kind people in Smallville. It's a story of father-and-son unlike any I can think of in pop culture. It's also a great story of nurture versus nature: what is his genetic encoding vs. the way he was brought up? You could get very scientific about it. It's going to be a great acting challenge, because I've got to commit to conveying when he's Superman that he's a warrior from the future, and not be embarrassed by that suit.
Q: How about the challenge of making us believe when you put on glasses you're a totally different person?
A: On a subliminal level that's a beautiful metaphor--you can be a wallflower who's very shy and uncomfortable, but all you have to do is take off your glasses and you're beautiful. There's something quite magical about it.
Q: How passionate will Superman get with Lois Lane?
A: Hopefully it will be about longing and wanting something that you can't really have because you're different.
Q: Let's talk about being different. Director Michael Bay said he likes quirky, weird sensibilities and there's no one weirder than you. How does that make you feel?
A: How does that make me feel? I just don't feel like I'm that weird. When I was a kid I felt like I was more weird. Patricia will say, "You're more normal than anybody I know, but people think you're weird." Do you think I'm weird, sitting here talking?
Q: You seem normal.
A: I find it weird that people say I'm weird. Maybe people say I'm weird because nobody wants to be the weirdest one on the set and it's just easier to point the finger at somebody who's already been labeled that.
Q: Maybe the label isn't personal but professional.
A: My performances, that I understand. I've always had a fascination with the bizarre, the surreal, the Grand Guignol, the grotesque. I've always liked imperfections. I never really wanted to sell perfection.
Q: Holly Hunter said you based your character in Raising Arizona on Woody Woodpecker. That's weird, isn't it?
A: I based him on Woody Woodpecker, yeah. It's fun and ultimately funny to do that. Comic books and cartoons have had a lot of influence in my life. I'm like a sponge. I could see a commercial on TV and get an idea, just the delivery somebody gave will stay in my head, and I will spew it back out. What leaves an impression on me is probably what people respond to as being weird.
Q: Jim Carrey told us last month that you were the first guy that he saw in a really big-money situation who was still experimenting and taking huge risks. He was referring to working with you on Peggy Sue Got Married. He said that a lot of people felt you ruined the movie because of that voice you used. But Carrey admired your guts.
A: That was nice of Jim. He's also a huge risk-taker. We've inspired each other a lot. Look, I did not want to be in Peggy Sue Got Married. I turned it down three times. Francis said, "I really need you to be in the movie." I read the script, which was a perfectly romantic film, but the character he wanted me to play was boring. He was the babe to Kathleen Turner's starring role. Just like women don't want to play the babe in movies, I didn't want to be Kathleen Turner's babe. I just wanted to play a character. So I thought, How can I make this guy really far out? I asked Francis about it on the phone and he said, Absolutely. I said, "I want to go really far out." He asked, "How far do you want to go?" I said, "I want to talk like Pokey" Because to me it was funny. And also, it was the way a lot of guys in high school sounded before their voices changed--they always had this high-sounding voice that would crack. When I see the movie now I'm really happy that I did that. I really am.
Q: You told Playboy that Francis blamed you after all about the failure of Peggy Sue, and that he hasn't asked you to work with him since. Did he react to that comment?
A: I love Francis and his movies, I would have liked to have been in any of them. I feel bad for anything that I've said that might have hurt anybody in my family My family is part of who I am, so it's important to understand when you ask me questions about them, that's part of my chemistry. But it's very easy to get seduced by a dialogue with somebody. The easiest thing to do is just not talk about family.
Q: What Francis did say to Vanity Fair about you was that he wished you kept the Coppola name.
A: I think a lot of people are angry about that. But I know why I did it and I stand by it. But I'm sorry if I've hurt anybody's feelings because I changed my name. I'm both--I'm Coppola and I'm Cage.
Q: What movies changed you as a kid?
A: Pinocchio was a big influence on me. The Red Balloon. Willy Wonka.
Q: What movies have you seen more than any other?
A: De Palma's Scarface. A Clockwork Orange. And Apocalypse Now.
Q: What's your favorite scene in a movie?
A: I love all the stuff with Martin Sheen at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, where he's losing it and smashing the mirror.
Q: Which takes us back to a quote of yours: "It was revenge that fueled much of my ambition." When did you say that?
A: Earlier on. Not anymore. This is from an old article, and these things come back to bite you on the ass. I said a lot of this stuff when I was 17. I'm 34 now. Like any teenager, I had a lot of anger at my family and friends. Most of that came from not being able to get the girl or being a kid in school who was called a weirdo or being an outsider or being teased because I couldn't play sports.
Q: You said being a father has had more of an impact on your life than anything else. In what ways, besides giving up smoking and buckling your seat belt?
A: Any parent knows it opens up huge doors of feeling. I became a responsible citizen when I became a father. I became a member of the community. I care more about people than I ever did before becoming a father.
Q: Has Weston seen any of your films yet?
A: No.
Q: When you think he's ready, which film will it be?
A: Probably Raising Arizona.
Q: Are you and Patricia planning on having children together?
A: Right now our plate is full.
Q: You've been married three years now. Are you more in love now than when you married?
A: Yes, I am more in love. We all know that marriage takes work; you don't just throw in the towel when there's any kind of a problem, you work through it.
Q: Patricia's made seven movies since you married, and you have done nearly as many. How hard is it to be working all the time?
A: You definitely keep things fresh and never get tired of each other, but there's something to be said for getting into a routine where we could see each other more. It works both ways.
Q: Any plans on working together?
A: Absolutely, yeah. It's just that she's been very busy and so have I, so it just hasn't worked out.
Q: Do you share acting tips when you're together?
A: We don't really talk that much about it. If she comes home and is excited about something she did I'll listen and I'll say, "Oh, that was a great choice," or she'll be the same way about something I did. But generally speaking we don't really help each other with our decision-making process. We don't read each other's scripts.
Q: Did Miles Davis ever help you feel what you were doing was all right?
A: I see Miles Davis as a surrealist father of mine. He was the first person to believe in me as an actor, the one who first said he understood what I was talking about. It was on "The Dick Cavett Show." Before we went on he said to me, "Why aren't you wearing your leather jacket? Didn't you learn anything from Dennis Hopper?" Because I was wearing a suit. Then I went out and started talking about how if Picasso could paint surreal, why couldn't actors try to achieve that as well? Then Miles came on, and he was very considerate and he said, "I hear what you're saying." He kept looking at me like we had our own connection. Ever since then he stayed in my thoughts. He said the words I needed to hear to keep going with my choices. It's weird because my surrealist name, Cage, is actually taken from a black character, Luke Cage.
Q: Have you made a movie you don't like?
A: I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. Even the failures I feel I've learned from. In some ways I got more out of those than the ones people respond to more.
Q: Would you agree with Robert Evans's assessment of the movie business: "There's no glamour in this business. There's accountants, lawyers, agents. For every bit of magic you spend a month of misery in negotiations. Things get made for the wrong reasons. And you fight on everything."
A: No, there are elements of that, but there are also great moments where you do feel glamorous and excited about the possibility of working with some people you have admired. It's true that the moviemaking process is not la-la-land, it's not the fun that people often think it is--some of it can be brutal work. I've worked 18-hour days, and that's not nine to five. But it's worth it. I feel very happy and lucky with what I'm doing and being paid to do what I want to do. I don't think I could do anything else.
Q: Is this the best time of your life?
A: Yeah, it's one of them. But I'm always afraid to say that because as soon as you do, then something goes wrong.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Jim Carrey for the May '98 issue of Movieline.