Up, up and away…

"I think a lot of people are angry about that. But I know why I did it and I stand by it," he told Movieline in 1998, in reply to what the director said about how he wished he had kept the Copolla name. "I am definitely still a Copola. I learned so much from all my family. But I had to become Nicolas Cage to know I could do it on my own," he proclaimed in another interview. That, however didn’t affect his relationship with his uncle. They worked again together a few years later in Peggy Sue Got Married, a romantic film where he plays Kathleen Turner’s babe. The movie failed to connect with audiences, which soon strained relations with his film-maker uncle, someone alongside whom he hasn’t worked since.

Thereafter, he did a number of films, including Wild At Heart (1990), Raising Arizona (1987) and other popular slapdash films such as Moonstruck (1987) and Honeymoon In Vegas (1992). And then came the big one.

Cage showed Hollywood that he could approach serious cinema with as much fluidity and conviction as he could portray comedy. The 1995 flick, Leaving Las Vegas, where he played Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic screenwriter who drinks himself to death, got him rave reviews and won him a host of awards, including the coveted Best Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe.

The nineties also saw Cage in a different persona — an aggressive actor willing to try his hand at a different genus of movies. The Rock, (co-starring Sean Connery) Con Air and Face/Off formed a trilogy of testosterone — thumping action films that further fortified his place amongst the A-list of Hollywood performers.

Unfortunately, all hasn’t been as bright for him on the relationships scene. His marriage to actress Patricia Arquette (who also starred with him in Martin Scorsece’s Bringing Out The Dead), was in the doldrums after which they both filed for divorce. However, things seem to have changed of late. According to the New York Daily News, a penitent Cage withdrew his divorce papers in an attempt at a possible reconciliation. This hasn’t been the only good news for him this 2000. His latest flick, Gone in 60 Seconds which released in the US earlier this month, made it to the number one slot after making box office collections of $25 million in its first week. The movie, directed by Dominic Sena is a crash-n-smash action drama about an ex-car thief played by Cage, who is forced to get back to stealing cars — fifty actually. All this in return for his captive brother, who is held ransom by a group of bad guys.

As if, he doesn’t have his plate full already, this summer he lends his histrionics to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a film based on the popular novel by Louis De Berniere, set in Greece during World War Two. And to add to that, Cage does another John Woo film titled Windtalkers which starts filming this August.

Superman truly lives!

— Aditya Mehta