The celebrated star of Leaving Las Vegas talks about seeing a ghost, throwing up on prom night, living in the competitive world of the Coppolas, and getting words of wisdom from Sean Connery while making The Rock.
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Here’s what we know about Nicolas Cage: He’s 32. He grew up in Long Beach, California. He started acting professionally when he was 17. His first movie was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and it was only time he used his family name. Coppola. His uncle is Francis, who turned him down for The Outsiders, but cast him in Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married. His father, August, is an academician and Francis’s older brother. His mother suffered from delusions and had to be institutionalized when he was six. His older brother Christopher directed him in Deadfall, and his oldest brother, Marc, is a deejay. Director Martha Coolidge didn’t know he was a Coppola when she cast him in Valley Girl. He appeared with Sean Penn in Racing With the Moon and Matthew Modine in Birdy by the time he was 20.
He kidnapped a baby in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona. Cher chose him to be her lover in Moonstruck. He ate a live ****roach in Vampire’s Kiss. He thought he was Elvis Presley in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. He has two tattoos, one of them a large lizard on his back. He acted with Sarah Jessica Parker and James Caan in Honeymoon in Vegas, Shirley MacLaine in Guarding Tess, Bridget Fonda and Rosie Perez in It Could Happen to You, Samuel L. Jackson is Amos & Andrew, David Caruso in Kiss of Death, He was in John Dahl’s Red Rock West, which has become a cult film noir. His performance as an alcoholic determined to drink himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas will or will not have won him an Oscar by the time you read this story. His next picture is The Rock, with Sean Connery. He said yes to Patricia Arquette when she proposed, and they’ve been married just over a year. They live in the Hollywood Hills.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Intense and angst-ridden are adjectives often used to describe you. How would you describe yourself? A: It’s hard to talk about oneself without feeling like a complete *******. Even if you say something negative, you’re talking about yourself. I don’t even know how to begin to describe myself.
Q: Do you consider yourself a “dangerous” actor? A: To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new. One could think of that as dangerous, I suppose.
Q: How many of your films are you satisfied with? A: Without mentioning names, out of all the movies, I’d say four.
Q: Would you say that some of your best work has been seriously over-the-top comic, romantic roles? A: Even though I get lambasted for the “out there,” crazy roles, they’re the ones people still talk about eight years down the road.
Q: You called Guarding Tess, It Could Happen to You and Honeymoon in Vegas your “sunshine trilogy.” Have you grouped any other of your pictures? A: No, but I think Leaving Las Vegas, Vampire’s Kiss and Wild at Heart would be an interesting trilogy.
Q: Was the Golden Globe you won for Leaving Las Vegas the first award you’ve received for your work? A: Yes, and I was very surprised. I never got into this for awards. If I thought about awards, I would not have been able to do a movie like Leaving Las Vegas, because the word around town was that Mike [Figgis] and I were making the most unreleasable movie in Hollywood. I had some fear that the movie would not get released.
Q: Time’s early review didn’t start the bandwagon rolling. It was written that you practically cha-cha’d through the gloom. A: Those are good words, cha-cha through the gloom. It’s kind of a poetic image, I like that. My character, Ben, was floating, he was not wallowing in his own pain. He’d reached the point of pain where he’d cut loose.
Q: Is suicide something you can understand? A: I don’t agree with suicide, though I can understand the mood one could get into where one could say, “I’m taking myself out of this equation because I’m an irritant to it.” But as for ever killing myself, no, it’s against my beliefs.
Q: Did Elisabeth Shue’s performance surprise you? A: I’d only seen her in Adventures in Babysitting and Soapdish. I thought she was really witty and funny, but I never would have been able to visualize her as Sera. I rented a room at the Chateau Marmont where Mike, Elisabeth and I rehearsed, and I saw how devoted she was to the part. There is a tremendous amount of pain inside of Elisabeth Shue. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there and she’s figured out a way to tap into it.
Q: Which is more powerful to you, the novel of Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien or the film? A: My experience with the book was infinitely more powerful. I wasn’t seeing myself in it. When I watched the movie it was hard to subtract myself from it. I had been emotionally invested in the novel in a way that I had not been with a book since A Clockwork Orange or Brave New World. I remember Francis [Coppola] saying that novels are beautiful but they’re like old trains, and that movies were the art form of our time.
Q: Do you agree with your uncle? A: I think that writing’s the root, and that a great novel still tells the story in a way that movies are unable to tell. There’s the imagination and the pleasure of lying in bed, reading a chapter and visualizing it any way you want, hearing the voices any way you want to hear them and not having them blasted into your brains or your eyes.
Q: David Lynch’s Wild at Heart was based on a novel. What’s your take on Lynch’s vision? A: He has a definite signature to his work and he’s a total artist. He loves to splash his own paint or sprinkle his own blood into the scene.
Q: In Newsweek David Ansen wrote that there’s something fundamentally adolescent about David Lynch’s vision—“he’s like a kid who never got over his first discovery that life is dirty.” A: Reminds me of something my father once said about Charles Bukowski: that he never got over losing his virginity. I think David’s more than that…look at The Elephant Man.
Q: Do you agree with your father about Bukowski? A: I thought that was a little harsh. He’s a terrific poet.
Q: Who were you trying to be when you played Peter Loew, the literary agent who descends into madness thinking he’s become a vampire? A: I was about 24 then and I was really into German expressionistic acting, people like Max Schreck, Emil Jannings and Conrad Veidt. I saw their movies when I was eight, because my dad would play them on a projector for a class he taught at Cal State Long Beach. I would see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu and freak out, really get nightmares over them. The problem was how to make a modern movie with some German expressionistic acting. The only way to do it was to play a man who’s going nuts, who thinks he’s a vampire, with his shoulders going up and eyes bulging. There was quite a bit of nervous tension on the set, because nobody had an idea which direction I was going to go. But the director, Robert Bierman, stood by it, though we had a few run-ins.
Q: Including when you decided to eat a live ****roach? A: Yeah, he originally wanted me to swallow a raw egg, but I wanted to do something that made more sense if this guy was losing his mind. No one had eaten a ****roach before, and if I did it we could save the movie money in special effects, because it would get the same reaction as a bus blowing up for a million dollars.
Q: How come you didn’t make it a fake ****roach? A: Because I knew that you and I would be sitting and talking about it 10 years later. I wanted to do something that was punk, if you will. I had heroes in music like the Who, who smashed their guitars. I wanted to have that rock and roll energy, that outlaw sensibility, a mini shock wave.
Q: How did eating a ****roach affect you afterwards? A: It gave me nightmares. I wasn’t able to eat food for a couple of days. If I think too much about it, it really makes me ill. You know, the animal rights people called when they heard I did that.
Q: Is it true that you have a laminated ****roach in your bed headboard? A: It is not a ****roach. ****roaches live in the sewers and all the creepy dirty places. It’s a beetle. Beetles live in the forests and are very different than ****roaches. I have the Titanus giganteus, which is the largest of all the beetles, in the headboard, and on the end tables I have the rhinoceros beetles.
Q: And how does your wife, Patricia, feel about them? A: She never really talks about it.
Q: Moving from the bug to the band, didn’t you once say that the Beatles song “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” had special meaning for you? A: I first became aware of the power of that song when my Uncle Francis was driving in his car over the Golden Gate Bridge. I was in the backseat with my cousin Roman and my brother Christopher, and he was listening to that album and that song came on. The sun was really bright, the light was clear, every-thing was blue, and I was 13 and very aware of his success and his accomplishments and starting to get a little intimidated by him. This was after Apocalypse Now. I was thinking about when I could have the right to listen to that song.
Q: And when did you? A: Maybe I jumped the gun, but when Valley Girl came out and was a hit, I got in my yellow Triumph Spitfire, put the top down, drove down Sunset Boulevard, put the cassette into the tape recorder, pressed play and just savored every word.
Q: Wasn’t it after this film that you told your uncle, “You were great, but I hold the mantle now”? Which was a line James Joyce supposedly said to Henrik Ibsen. Were you joking or did you mean it? A: I heard that line first at Francis’s house. My father was there and Francis was talking about Ibsen and Joyce, and he said that line and then said, “I never understood what Joyce meant by that, but now I get it.” I don’t know what he meant by that, with my father sitting next to him. So years later when Valley Girl came out and Francis was by the fireplace—and I hope you make a note that I’m laughing now—he was lighting a cigar and I just said it: “You were great Francis, but I hold the mantle now.” He got upset and flustered. Listen, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that there is a fundamental competitive edge amongst the men in my family. I don’t know where it comes from.
Q: Were you also competitive among your friends as a child? Did you play any sports? A: Sports caused me a great deal of difficulty in school. My nightmare was that moment of “Who’s going to get picked for the team?” ‘Cause I never got picked. My father wasn’t the kind of guy that you played ball with. He was more like the kind of guy you’d go watch Citizen Kane with
Q: Did you feel different from your friends? A: I was always shocked when I went to the doctor’s office and they did my X ray and didn’t find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.
Q: Still, do you look back favorably on your childhood? A: If I really analyzed my childhood I would have some difficulty with some of the stuff that went on, but I think I had some kind of guardian angel protecting me, because no matter how bizarre something got I was always able to look at it like it wasn’t that strange.
Q: You said you looked upon your dad as James Bond with a PhD. A: That was because my dad looks a lot like Sean Connery. I remember when he took me to the drive-in movie to see Dr. No, and basically I saw my father.
Q: You were the youngest of three brothers—were you pampered? A: No. One of the reasons why I think I became a film actor is by the time I came around, the home movie camera was not out as much. There were all these pictures of Marc and of Christopher, but there were very few of me. So I’m just trying to make up for it now.
Q: Your mother suffered from severe depression and delusions, and eventually had to be institutionalized while you were a boy. When did you become aware of her illness? A: I knew there was something wrong with her when she started talking to the wall. I remember saying, “Mom, walls don’t talk.” And she thought that was really funny. She’s a very gentle person who is quite jolly, but like anybody who goes into these states, what they’re see-ing is real. When she would go into those modes, she came up with the most incredible poetry, beautiful and power-ful and scary. The hardest thing about it, was just having to visit her in that place at a young age, going down that hallway in Norwalk with people grabbing you. Fortunately, knock on wood, everything’s fine now.
Q: Has she seen all your films? A: Yeah, but the time that I started working as an actor, she had been there for many years, so when she came out it was like Rip Van Winkle. She didn’t know what the hell was going on. “What do you mean, Nicky’s an actor?”
Q: You were 12 when your parents divorced—how hard was that? A: I thought it was fascinating. I was going to act with the judge and I did. My brothers teased me because I had the biggest ****-eating grin on my face, talking about how great my dad is and how great my mom is.
Q: Both parents wanted custody? A: Yeah. That was a sad day, because my mom wanted to be strong and wanted custody. Why are we talking about all this?
Q: Because it helps us understand who you are, and how you got to where you are. Like, you’ve said that a lot of the behaviors of characters you’ve played came from your mother. A: Yes. I understand what you mean, it makes sense. That’s probably why I’m answering you. I’m just not sure this is the right forum for it.
Q: Is it true that your mother used to tease your dad, saying that Robert Mitchum was actually your father? A: Yes. I wish I had that picture to show you of Mitchum, which he inscribed, “To Joy, love and kisses, Bob.” My dad always said, “Is Nicky mine?” And the joke is that everybody knew about it except me. It had been going on for years. My mother told me recently, “I just said that I was with another man, which I wasn’t. I was just trying to make him angry.” And I said, “But mom, I’ve been living with that 32 years, that anger.” For 30 years my father’s been a little angry with me and that’s probably why.
Q: Did your father instill any religion in you? A: I do not have a religion in my life, I wasn’t raised that way. My father always believed that if I was going to have a religion I should discover it on my own and not have it crammed down my throat at a young age. I kind of wish I had some religion.
Q: Weren’t you once attracted to Buddhism? A: What I loved about Buddhism is that it suggests that we are already holy, that we are already in that enlightened state, which is very convenient. I used to like the saying: “To be like the lotus flower down the muddy waters of the river Nile, touched but not stained.” I often think about that when I’m in situations where I feel like I’m touching something that I don’t want to get on me, metaphorically.
Q: What books or writers influenced you? A: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis broke my heart. The notion of a young man waking up one morning as a ****roach and the hatred that he’s feeling from his family was really the ultimate metaphor for teenage alienation. And I guess my favorite writer is Dostoyevsky.
Q: As far as actors’ influences go, was it James Dean or Scott Baio who got you interested in acting? A: It was James Dean in East of Eden. Scott Baio, I never even saw his show—all I know is that the girl I had a crush on in high school was looking at a picture of Scott Baio and I wanted her to be looking at a picture of me.
Q: Did studying at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco make you want to appear on stage? A: No, I have stage fright. I don’t like it. I’ve never gotten over it.
Q: What else has frightened you? A: I don’t know how to tell this story without sounding like a complete lunatic, but it was at my Uncle Francis’s house in Napa. I was living in the attic, and there were bats there in between the walls—you could hear the scratching and the place smelled of guano. One night I was not asleep yet, but the door in front of my bed opened and there was this pitch-black silhouette of a woman with big hair. I thought it was my aunt coming to say good night. So I said, “Good night,” and it didn’t say anything. Then it moved towards me and my body froze up and I let out this bloodcurdling scream and threw my pillow. Then it disappeared. Now, am I saying I saw a ghost? I still don’t know. But I saw something that freaked me out.
Q: Beverly Hills High School also apparently freaked you out because you left before graduating. A: Let me make it clear that I didn’t drop out of high school, I took the proficiency exam and got out on that. I was only going there to be in the plays, and when they didn’t work I got out. My problem was that I didn’t have any money and couldn’t do the things that some of the other kids could do. I remember my prom was a complete disaster. I used bonds my grandmother had given me to rent a tuxedo and a limousine so I could go to the prom with this beautiful girl. And at the end of the night I went to kiss her and she responded. I was so nervous that my stomach got really nauseous and I said, “Excuse me” and just threw up on the street all over my shoes and my rented tux. The limo driver wouldn’t let me in the car. He split and I had to walk home. That was my prom night.
Q: You were rejected when you auditioned for your uncle’s film The Outsiders. Didn’t he have anything to do with the casting? A: Of course he did. He obviously didn’t want me in the movie.
Q: Did you go through the auditioning process on Coppola’s next one, Rumble Fish? A: No, that time I read with the other actors and was very surprised when I got the part, because I wasn’t auditioning for it. So I was thrilled.
Q: How thrilled were you when Francis had you do one scene 42 times? A: I still don’t know what the reason for that was. My first two takes were my best. I got a phone call after that movie from my father who said, “You’re too restrained as an actor and I’m getting this from a very high level. I don’t think you have what it takes.” I thought, who the hell’s he been talking to? I guess people in my family were not impressed with the character. It wasn’t until Valley Girl, when I changed my name, that I felt like the weight of that name was off of me. Nobody knew I was related to Francis, and I was able to get the role on my own merit, which meant a lot to me. Later Martha Coolidge said that if she had known, it might have colored her perception. But the fact that I was in Rumble Fish had a lot to do with my getting it, so in that way Francis really helped me. He gave me some cachet. But it wasn’t until he saw Valley Girl that he saw I could act.
Q: You called Matt Dillon an “airhead” after Rumble Fish—has he changed since then? A: Well, I don’t think of Matt Dillon as an airhead now. He’s a darn good actor. The funny thing about growing up in movies is when you start acting at 17 you say things sometimes like a 17-year-old and those things come back to haunt you when you’re 32. People have to be allowed to grow.
Q: You were in two films with Sean Penn—_Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ and Racing With the Moon. Did you get along with him? A: We’ve had a few volatile moments, because we’re both kind of outspoken about our feelings. I don’t have much contact with him any more. I saw his performance in Dead Man Walking and thought it was fantastic.
Q: What other actors or performances have you liked recently? A: I like Christopher Walken, he’s one of my favorite actors. And I really enjoyed Al Pacino in Heat. I liked both his and De Niro’s performances tremendously, but I went with Pacino’s for the style and energy of it.
Q: Did you actually whisper “clouds in my coffee” in Carly Simon’s ear at The Cotton Club premiere? A: Yes. I took a program, rolled it up, put it to her ear and whispered, “clouds in my coffee.” She whipped her head around, snarled, and I looked at my friend like he did it.
Q: You seem to have an ability to get under people’s skin. In Peggy Sue Got Married, did Kathleen Turner blame you for ruining the film by the way you played your character, with that voice? A: I don’t think she blamed me after she saw the movie, but while we were making it she was, you know, “What are you doing? You’re ruining the movie.” She was dealing with what? Jerry Lewis on acid, I was reading books on Edward Munch then, how everyone hated his works. So I thought I had to be met with opposition, because I had this arrogant, headstrong attitude at 22. I was delighted when I got horrible reviews. I would have been miserable if I had not gotten bad reviews. I even cut them out. One said I was “a wart on an otherwise beautiful film.” Another, “a poorly wired robot.”
Q: Cher really wanted you in Moonstruck, because she saw Peggy Sue Got Married and said you were her guy. What did she see that probably no other actress would have? A: I love her for that. She had just recovered from a car accident and she said that the Charlie Bodell character I played was like watching a two-hour car accident.
Q: Rosie Perez said when she acted with you that basically you’re just a nerd. A: Did she say that? Well, I am kind of a nerd.
Q: Are you also a gambler? Sarah Jessica Parker said during Honeymoon in Vegas she saw you drop a lot of money at the tables. A: I’m not a gambler, though at that moment I was. What I would do was double down to get the money I lost back. One time I doubled down and I lost it all, which was quite a bit of money.
Q: Over $10,000? A: In that arena. Then I went to bed and woke up a half hour earlier than my set call, so I went to the tables, doubled down the money I lost, got it back, and I never did it again. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.
Q: The advertising campaign seems to be in full swing for your next film, The Rock, with Sean Connery. What was it like acting with the guy who looks like your father? A: It gave me a mentor-like relationship, which is very difficult for actors to find. He likes actors and he doesn’t like to be bull****ted or double-crossed. He validated some of my thoughts that I was concerned about. He’s enjoying a career where he’s at the top of his form at his age, which is remarkable. I mean, who gets to act that long and still be an event with every movie? I would ask him questions about determining image—you know the movie star image. What about an actor who wants to change his voice or his look? He said, “Don’t worry about that, don’t concern yourself with the image. Just do your work.”
Q: You’ve said that you’ve always been attracted to crazy women because in their craziness was infinity. What does that mean? A: With a crazy woman you’re floating in space, so it’s an infinity. Space and time break down in a way that you don’t really know where you are.
Q: You’ve also said that when you’re with someone who’s a really good person, you feel really corrupt with them. Why? A: It’s like Dmitry in The Brothers Karamazov. He was with that woman who was supposed to be a saint and she is the one who betrayed him in the end. The one who treated him like dog-doo was the one who actually stuck up for him in the end. I guess I’m attracted to people who have bad stories to tell—I feel simpatico with them.
Q: Are you still as mystified with women as you were seven years ago when you told Playboy that you didn’t understand them, and that if you were to become one, the first thing you’d do is masturbate? A: Yeah, but now I think the first thing I would do is have sex.
Q: If you could change one thing about your first sexual experience, what would it be? A: You want me to talk about my first sexual experience?
Q: I didn’t ask you to describe it or how old you were or the size of your dick. A: What was the question again?
Q: If you could change one thing about your first sexual experience, what would it be? A: I would have taken more time.
Q: Can you explain the ketchup bottle throwing incident at Canter’s, where you smashed the bottle against a wall to impress your date? A: I was with a girl that I liked who was older and trying to get me to watch movies like The Story of O. I had no concept of that way of having sex and wanted to turn her on. So I said, “If I threw this ketchup bottle against the wall would that turn you on?” She went, “Yeah.” So I did it.
Q: And did it work for her? A: Kind of. Although I was banned from the restaurant for a year. But I’ve given them a lot of publicity. And I met my wife there, you know. Twice.
Q: The first time was in 1987 when you offered to marry her and she made three demands: J.D. Salinger’s autograph, a black orchid and a Bob’s Big Boy statue. A: I don’t want to talk about that. She’s asked me not to talk any more about us.
Q: OK, but how did you locate Salinger’s autograph? A: At a place on Beverly Boulevard. It was a handwritten letter to a woman.
Q: What did it cost? A: It was a lot of money, $2,500. A lot of people don’t believe it, because they know that J.D. Salinger never signed anything. And then my housekeeper threw it out.
Q: Eight years later when Patricia proposed to you, did that come as a shock? A: Yeah. I said yes immediately. That’s all I’m going to talk about. We have a mutual agreement that we’re going to respect the privacy of our marriage—
Q: Do you still feel that the only true happiness you’ve ever felt is when you’ve held your five-year-old son, Weston? A: Yes. Weston’s enabled me to feel more happiness in other circumstances as well. He’s really changed my outlook on life.
Q: Drugs can do that too. Do you smoke grass? A: Very rarely. I used to smoke it a lot more.
Q: Ever done acid or any other hallucinogens? A: No, no.
Q: You do like a good cigar though, don’t you? A: They’re calming. It’s a good way to shift gears in the day.
Q: Have you gone to any of the cigar and wine bars that have opened in L.A.? A: Jim Carrey and I went to George Hamilton’s wine bar. He’s an interesting one. He was there and had some fun stories. I told him how he was one of my heroes from the time he played Evel Knievel. We had cigars, and very expensive bottles of wine were opened, and Jim and I were going, “This is great, man.” At the end of the night we got slapped with an $8,000 bill. It was at that point that George became the fox in the Pinocchio story. He happens to look quite a bit like that fox. I would not want to play cards with George Hamilton.
Q: So Jim Carrey’s a friend. Do you have many friends? A: It’s difficult for me to make friends. There aren’t too many people that I feel comfortable with right away.
Q: What about Johnny Depp—didn’t you help him out when he was just getting started? A: I met Johnny Depp playing Monopoly. I’d been seeing his ex-girlfriend. At first we didn’t like each other, but then we did, and I told him he should be an actor. He said, “No, I can’t act.” Then he met my agent and the rest is history.
Q: Before we let you go, there was some incident where you supposedly attempted to hijack a plane. What was that all about? A: That was a bad experience. I got carried away. I didn’t think that the P.A. system was connected to the entire airplane, and I said into it that I was the captain and the plane was losing altitude and I wasn’t feeling well, so please bear with me. At the end of the flight I was met by the police. I almost got in a lot of trouble, and because of that I’m afraid of getting into an airplane accident whenever I fly.
Q: Does that give you nightmares? A: No, I don’t dream. Or I don’t remember my dreams.
Q: You used to suffer from them though. A: I did, yeah.
Q: And was it your father who told you to think of a white horse coming to your rescue whenever you had a nightmare? A: Yeah, and it worked.
Q: In 1990 you said that you were still searching for what you wanted to do. Is that search over? A: I know what I want to do, I’m doing it, but I’m still very much a student of the craft and I think I can go further. I still torment myself. I have a lot of self-doubt.
I had forgotten how powerful this interview is.... Really really intense. The interviewer really pushed it.... Feeling conflicted about it.... on the one hand it's revelatory on the other it's intrusive.
Stand out lines for me,
'people have to be allowed to change.'
'i don't dream..' i met someone the other day who doesn't dream or doesn't remember her dreams. We worked out she was a deep sleeper and was either in deep sleep or awake..without the inbetween stages where dreams happen, or that they are very short parts of her sleep cycle. I can't imagine life without dreams!
It's a very revealing interview, in many ways. I think he probably regretted some of those answers. But he didn't have to answer. I like those kind of interviews best because it does give you an understanding of the person, and their motivations as an artist.
What an amazing and incredNICble wonderful interview! So insightful! I really enjoyed, reading it! Some things, I already knew, but other things, like some of the stories from his childhood are new to me! Thank you, Lady T., for posting it! :)
-- Edited by Lady Roxanne on Thursday 20th of September 2012 12:11:53 PM
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"When you think about magic, it is imagination plus willpower focused in such a way that you can create a conscious effect in the material world..."
I had forgotten how powerful this interview is.... Really really intense. The interviewer really pushed it.... Feeling conflicted about it.... on the one hand it's revelatory on the other it's intrusive. 
