Nicolas Cage

Interview By: J.P. Mangalindan
JPMangalindan@TheCinemaSource.com

When Nicolas Cage gets angry, he doesn't let that fury boil over.

'George Washington once said that when you're angry, count to 10 and when you're really angry, count to 100 before you do anything,' he says. A self-admitted sap, Cage takes his emotions and funnels them into something more constructive: his acting. 'It's a way to transfer that anger, to do something positive with emotions, something like The Weather Man.'

In Gore Verbinski's newest flick, David Spritz (Cage) is a local celebrity, a weatherman admired and recognized by fans and despised by detractors. Superficially, he's a seasoned pro and collected guy, but behind the carefully-constructed fa'ade, his life is murky, deluged with uncertainty and change, from a painful divorce with his wife (Hope Davis), his dad's illness, and trouble connecting with his kids.

Cage's affecting performance is reminiscent of his tactile, bipolar turns as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in 2002's Adaptation, but the character David, in many ways, is more relatable ' and slightly less neurotic. One can more readily empathize with his everyman dilemmas, including a tenuous relationship with his father, played by Michael Caine, whom the actor reveres. It's a bond Cage identifies with.

'My father had that aura about him as a highly-regarded professor of literature,' he says. 'That's a lot to live up to, so I was always trying to figure out how I can aspire to be him. I'd listen to classical music, read the classic novels. There was definitely this intimidating aura of growing up with an academic I just used feelings about my own father for the film.'

With years of splashy tabloid spreads chronicling his alleged partying antics and relationships under his belt, it's not the questions about his wife or his children that garner reactions, but surprisingly, persisting rumors about his education, namely that Cage never graduated high school.

'I'm not a high school dropout,' he says of the persisting rumors. 'That did not happen. I was not a good match for school and I went to my father. 'Dad, this isn't me. I want to act. I want to work. This isn't right for me. It's affecting me. It's affecting my self-esteem. I've got to get out. So I studied, got the GED, got a diploma and I left. I went right to work.'

Starting humbly in small parts like 'Brad's Bud' in the adolescent classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Cage proved he was more than just Hollywood royalty (Cage's uncle is none other than Francis Ford Coppola) with meaty roles in Moonstruck and, eight years later, Leaving Las Vegas. Presently, Cage sits atop the Hollywood heap, earning up to $20 million a picture. In spite of it all, Cage freely admits fame, and the accompanying fat checks, isn't everything.

'It is a reality, but it's an age-old dodge,' he admits. 'You're not really going to find happiness in the material things. They will make things easier. Maybe that nagging feeling is something else. And I wrestle with that feeling everyday. I'm always struggling between the spiritual and the material, so that's a hard thing to explain to people, especially if that person is your grandmother, to say, 'It's not at all what it looks like.''

In his personal life, Cage admits to having experienced a few bumps on the way to professional and personal success, whether it's a fair number of film duds (remember Firebirds or Vampire's Kiss' Yea' Neither do we.) or failed relationships (the shotgun nuptials with Lisa Marie Presley). Few men have experienced the highs and lows he has, yet slowly, but surely, he's learning the trick to navigating the tricky road of life.

'I think that we live in cycles,' Cage says earnestly. 'Things wax and wane. I'm just trying to get better at negotiating the waves. ' I think I can be better in all ways ' as an actor, as a father, as a husband ' you can't get anything done if you're jumping up and down, so excited you can't see an accident about to happen or if you're down in the dumps, you're not going to be any good to anybody either. I'm not saying I have control over my destiny. I don't. But I would like to get better at surfing or riding the waves of life.'