As strange as Nicolas Cage may act in front of the camera, his life away from Hollywood is equally as unusual. Cage is something of an enigma, as he has been nominated for Oscars and won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, and at the same time has been in some of the most ridiculous and mocked films of all time. It feels like Cage stars in every other movie that comes out, especially in the dumping ground of January and February.
Here are 11 things to know about the wild world of Nicolas Cage…
1. Cage proposed to Patricia Arquette on the day he met her in the early 1980s. Arquette thought he was a bit strange but played along with his antics by creating a list of things Cage would have to fulfill to win her. When he started to work his way through the list, Arquette got scared and avoided him. In a strange turn of events, they met again many years later and later went on to marry.
2. Tim Burton cast Cage as Superman in his Superman adaptation that never came to fruition, even fitting him for a costume.
3. Cage is such a big fan of Superman that he named his son Kal-El, Superman’s Kryptonian name.
4. He ate a real cockroach in the film Vampire’s Kiss, which reportedly took three takes. He once said about the experience, “Every muscle in my body didn’t want to do it, but I did it anyway.”
5. After his first film role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he adopted the stage name of Cage because he wanted to assure himself that any success he had was based on his own merits, not the fame of his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola.
6. When Cage was arrested in New Orleans and charged with alleged domestic violence against his wife, Alice, and disturbing the peace, the $11,000 needed to bail him out was posted by Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman, better known as “Dog the Bounty Hunter.”
7. Cage has a loyal internet culture who follows him devotedly. On Reddit, he has an entire community evoked to his career, where they ironically call him the one true God.
8. One time, Cage woke up in his house at Orange County in the middle of the night to find a naked man eating a fudgesicle in front of his bed. The man was arrested by police, but Cage pressed no charges.
9. Stated that the reason he owned so many pieces of property in the past–including multiple castles, mansions, and an island–was to protect his money without buying stock or relying on a bank, believing that real estate was the most trustworthy way to accomplish this. However, after the real estate bubble collapsed, he sold most of his property at a loss and rescinded on his belief. He now owns a modest amount of property: a house in Las Vegas near his friends and a small cottage near Glastonbury, England.
10. Cage suffers from vertigo.
11. Speaking of his elaborate real estate ventures, in the late 90s Cage lived in a fake castle in California. He wanted to import a real one from overseas, but that never happened.