Nicolas Cage Movies List

Nicolas Cage, Movie Star and Producer

Nicholas Kim Coppola (aka, Nicolas Cage) was born in 1964 to the brother of legendary film director Francis Ford Coppola. Young Nicholas Coppola aspired to an acting career from an early age, and in an effort to avoid the stigma of nepotism, he changed his last name to "Cage", taking inspiration from the Marvel comic book character Luke Cage.

Nicolas Cage got his big break, or so he thought, with a bit role in the eighties classic "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", but most of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. It wasn't until the following year, while auditioning for a role in his uncle's movie "Rumble Fish", that Nicolas Cage landed his breakthrough role as a young punk-rocker in the seminal 80s film "Valley Girl".

That portrayal launched his career, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s Nicholas Cage portrayed a string of memorable characters in movies like "Peggy Sue Got Married", "Moonstruck", and "Wild At Heart".

By the early 90s, Nicolas Cage movies were becoming a fixture in American pop culture, with new releases from the actor hitting the big screen two and three times per year.

Nicolas Cage became one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, and the actor quickly became known for his diverse choices in roles, from comedies like "Guarding Tess", to small independent films like "Leaving Las Vegas" (for which he won an Oscar as Best Actor) to blockbusters like "Face/Off" and "Con Air".

By the mid-1990s, Nicolas Cage was a bona fide movie star, and he continues making several movies every year, from big budget action pics like the "National Treasure" franchise and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" to smaller, more character-driven films like "The Weather Man" and "Adaptation.", in which he played twin brothers in another Oscar-nominated performance.

The box-office performance of Nicolas Cage movies is as unpredictable as the actor's choice in roles - he has arguably had as many big time flops as surprising successes, and as an actor Nicolas Cage always keep audiences on their toes!

Fun Nicolas Cage Facts!

• Was married to both Lisa Marie Presley and Patricia Arquette, whom he proposed to on the day the two met!
• Among his cousins are "Rushmore" actor Jason Schwartzman, writer/director Sofia Coppola, cinematographer John Schwartzman, filmmaker Roman Coppola and (through marriage) film-maker Spike Jonze, who directed him in "Adaptation."
  
• Was cast in Tim Burton's ill-fated Superman movie, even though he was nearly forty at the time
  
• Auditioned for the lead role in "Risky Business" but lost out to Tom Cruise
• Is a third-generation Oscar-winner - his grandfather, Carmine Coppola, won an Oscar for the score to "The Godfather II" and his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, has won 5 Oscars
  

Nicolas Cage Movies List

• Kick Ass (2010)

• Based on the Mark Millar/John Romita Jr comic book series of the same name, in "Kick Ass", Nicolas Cage plays Big Daddy, a costumed vigilante who patrols the streets of New York with his sidekick/adolescent daughter, Hit Girl.
  
• For his role in "Kick Ass", Nicolas Cage modeled his performance as Big Daddy after Adam West's Batman from the 1960s TV series.
• The film received mixed reviews from the critics, with many of them uncomfortable with the film's over-the-top violence, especially since the main characters are children. That didn't hurt the movie's success, and a sequel is in the works for 2012.
  

• The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
  

• In Disney's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Nicolas Cage portrays a student of the legendary magician Merlin, who must train an apprentice in modern-day New York City. His unwilling protégé is a nerdy klutz who must learn the ways of magic to save the city from the forces of darkness. Can the apprentice defeat the baddies and win the heart of the girl of his dreams?
• The film is loosely based on the sequence from Disney's "Fantasia", where Mickey Mouse plays the apprentice, and both stories are based on the 1797 poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
  
• During filming of this movie, there were several on-set injuries caused by two separate car crashes in New York City's Times Square.

• The Family Man (2001)
  

• In this comedy directed by Brett Ratner, Nicolas Cage plays a hot-shot Wall Street executive who thinks he has it all - the money, the fast car, the beautiful women. But when he wakes up one morning in an alternate reality, he's suddenly a family man with a wife and kids and a house in suburbs. He desperately wants to return to reality and the comforts of his single life, but he comes to learn that money isn't the key to a happy life.
  

• National Treasure (2005)/ National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (2008)

• In the "National Treasure" movies, Nicolas Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, a descendant of a family of treasure seekers who have been searching for a chest buried by America's founding fathers. The nation's forefathers have planted hidden clues everywhere, from paper currency to a secret message hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Now Ben must steal that document from the National Archive and protect it from those who would try to destroy the treasure his family has been seeking through the centuries!
• In the sequel, "National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets", Ben and his allies search out a lost city of gold and the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in adventure that brings them from Washington, D.C. to Buckingham Palace to Mount Rushmore as they race to find the treasure before it's too late!
  

• Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)

• In "Gone in 60 Seconds", Nicolas Cage co-stars with Angelina Jolie and Robert Duvall in the tale of a car thief who must steal 50 exotic cars in one night to save his brother's life. Although it's not a direct remake of the 1974 movie of the same name, the two films do have a few plot points in common, including the location of the final car to be stolen.

• In preparation for the film, Nicolas Cage attended three different driving schools, and ended up doing most of his own driving in the movie. After filming was completed, Cage was so enamored with driving that he took it up as a hobby.

• The Rock (1997)
  

• In "The Rock", Nicolas Cage co-stars with Sean Connery as a pair of experts hired to foil a plot being hatched in Alcatraz prison, aka the Rock. A renegade group of Marines are plotting to attack San Francisco, and Cage's biochemist and Connery's Alcatraz-escapee are the only ones who can stop them!
• The movie was actually filmed at the notorious prison in San Francisco Bay, but the tunnel system that plays such a vital role in the plot was a creation of the filmmakers and does not actually exist.
• The movies cinematographer, John Schwartzman (brother of actor Jason Schwartzman), is the stepson of Talia Shire, who is Francis Ford Coppola's sister, and Nicolas Cage's aunt!

• Lord of War (2006)

• "Lord of War" was the rare Nicolas Cage movie that was more popular with critics than it was with audiences. In it, Nicolas Cage plays an arms dealer who reflects on his role in the arms trade over the past 20 years. It's more of a character-piece than an action film, and it's complex analysis of the arms trade during the height of the Iraq war was not much of a draw for film goers at the time.
  

• Astro Boy(2009)
  

• In "Astro Boy", Nicolas Cage provides the voice of Dr Tenma, a brilliant scientist whose dies dies at an early age. Grief-stricken, the doctor creates a robot boy to take his late son's place, but when the boy fails to live up to his expectations he rejects him. Soon the artificial boy discovers his robotic super-powers and becomes a superhero who must save the world from alien invaders and reconcile with this disappointed creator.

• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

• In this psuedo-sequel to the Harvey Keitel film, "The Bad Lieutenant", Nicolas Cage teams up with renegade director Wener Herzog to portray a drug-crazed corrupt police lieutenant in post-Katrina New Orleans.
  
• The film is something of a return-to-form for Cage, who goes all-out in his performance as the drugged-out, hallucinating, violent cop in that satisfyingly-strange acting style that only Nicolas Cage can pull off!
• Not exactly a sequel and not at all a remake, the film's use of "Bad Lieutenant" in the title was apparently a marketing ploy used to help draw attention to the film by attempting to make an association with the successful independent film starring Harvey Keitel
  

• Ghost Rider (2007)

• In this comic book adaptation, Nicolas Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stunt driver who makes a deal with Mephistopheles to save his dying father. In exchange, Johnny becomes the "Ghost Rider", a bounty hunter who retrieves escaped souls and returns them to hell. When the girl of his dreams re-enters his life, he hopes for to win back his soul and have a chance at a normal life. If he can defeat Mephistopheles' evil son, he just may earn back his soul...
• Unlike in most film adaptations of Marvel comic books, Stan Lee does not make a cameo appearance - he played no role in the creation of the "Ghost Rider" character.
• The special effects used to create Nicolas Cage's flaming skull were based upon an actual X-ray of the actor's head!
  

• Wild At Heart (1990)

• In my favorite Nicolas Cage movie of all time, he co-stars with Laura Dern in a "wild" road movie directed by David Lynch. "Wild at Heart" is a dark, mind-bending road trip movie that tells the tale of Sailor and Lula, an inseparable couple on their way to California. Little do they know that Lula's psychotic wicked-witch of a mother has dispatched an assassin to kill Sailor and "rescue" Lula from his wicked ways.
• The film is filled with wonderfully bizarre Lynch-ian touches, culminating in Willem Dafoe's psychopathic Bobby Peru, who convinces Sailor top join him in an ill-fated robbery that could be the end of Sailor and Lula's dreams to be together.
• The film won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and it was both loved and hated by audiences. After its release, Dianne Ladd (Laura Dern's real-life mother) was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Lula's psycho mother
  

• Moonstruck (1987)
  

• In director Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning "Moonstruck", Nicolas Cage co-stars with Cher as her reluctant suitor, Ronny, whose brother is engaged to marry her. Cher's Loretta wants to play it safe and marry for security, but when she meets her fiance's passionate younger brother, the two fall in love. A night at the opera with her fiance's brother turns her safe little world upside down, and in the end she has to pick which man to be with - the mild-mannered Johnny, or Cage's passionate, one-handed romantic, Ronny.
• The movie earned Oscars for Cher and Olympia Dukakis, and was one of the highest-grossing films of 1987.

• Adaptation. (2002)

• In this Nicolas Cage movie, the actor turns in his most compelling performance as twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman. This film is sort of a movie-within-a-movie - it tells the parallel stories of real-life author Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep), and Charlie Kaufman, the real-life screenwriter, who is charged with adapting her non-fiction book "The Orchid Thief" into a screenplay. Charlie is neurotic and feeling the pressure to deliver, while his twin brother Donald takes up writing on a whim and ends up being more successful at it than Charlie. Meanwhile, there's some intrigue going on with Orleans and the Florida man she wrote her book about. When Charlie and Donald travel to Florida, all the various story lines come together with unexpected - and shocking - results.

• Raising Arizona (1987)
  

• This early comedy from the Oscar-winning Coen brothers features Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a pair of clueless lovers desperate for a baby. When they discover that they cannot conceive a child on their own, they decide to steal one from a wealthy local businessman, Nathan Arizona, whose wife has just had quintuplets - after all, they've been "over-blessed" and surely won't mind, right? The kidnapping goes wrong, though, and life becomes complicated for the pair after the Arizona's offer up a huge reward for the return of their baby son.
  

• Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
  

• In his Oscar-winning performance for "Leaving Las Vegas", Nicolas Cage plays an alcoholic screenwriter whose life has fallen apart at the seams. With nothing left to live for, he decides to move to a sleazy Las Vegas motel and drink himself to death. Along the way he meets a prostitute, played by Elisabeth Shue (also nominated for an Oscar). The two are both desperately in need of someone to love, and to love them, and he agrees to let her into his life if she she agrees not to interfere with his suicidal plan. She does, and the two of them strike-up a relationship that is doomed from the start.
  

• Con-Air (1997)

• In "Con Air", Nicolas Cage stars as a former US Army Ranger who has just been released from a maximum security federal prison after having served time for accidentally killing a man in a bar brawl. All he wants is to return to his wife and daughter, but life has other plans! Turns out the plane he's traveling home on is also transporting some of America's most dangerous killers to their new prison home. Along the way the convicts take control of the airplane, and it's up to Cage and a US Marshall played by John Cusack to stop the authorities from blowing the plane out of the sky top prevent the escape of the dangerous men aboard.
  

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