By Mark Gray
11:01am PST, Jan 7, 2024
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The legends are true… well, some of them. To celebrate Oscar winner Nicolas Cage's 60th birthday on Jan. 7, 2024, we're revisiting some of our favorite stories about the actor's crazy life.
When the Academy Award winner appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to promote his movie "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" in 2022 — Nic's first national TV talk show appearance in 14 years — he confirmed (and denied) some of the wild rumors that have encircled his life over the years. As they say, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
Keep reading to find out all the completely true urban myths about Nicolas Cage… as told by Nicolas Cage...
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There has a been a rumor for years claiming Nicolas Cage owned a two-headed snake. That, my friends, is true… and he spent $80,000 on it! "I was dreaming about two-headed eagles," the actor told Jimmy Kimmel. "One night I had this dream and then the next day my manager at the time got a phone call saying, 'I've got a two-headed snake that I found in Northridge [California] and I think your client Nic Cage would be interested.'" The two snake heads would actually fight each other over food, not realizing that their grub was going to the same shared stomach. "I would have to put a spatula between the two heads to feed them and it just got a little too freaky for me. So I took it to the Audubon Zoo… It lived for 14 years and it died just recently," he said.
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The claim: Nicolas Cage once turned $200 into $20,000 while gambling 20 years ago. This one is true! And the actor hasn't gambled since… nor did he keep the money. Recalling that lucky night at the roulette wheel in the Bahamas, Nic said he just couldn't lose for about 30 minutes. "Every number I chose, it kept winning, and I often chose the same numbers. Even the woman spinning the wheel was saying, 'Nothing sweeter than a repeater,'" he said. With his five-figure winnings in hand, Nic found a local orphanage and donated every penny of that $20,000. (He even gave the headmistress the donation in cold, hard cash!) "I never gambled again because it would ruin the magic of that night," he said. Coincidentally enough, Nic lives in the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas.
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So, you think Nicolas Cage studied martial arts? You're right! The actor started practicing martial arts at the age of 12. "I wanted to be Bruce Lee," he told Wired. "I've always been fascinated by the choreography, if you will, of martial arts, but I don't practice anymore."
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Anyone can own a dog or cat, right? Nicolas Cage owns an African pied crow. Really. "He looks like he's wearing a tuxedo," Nic said, referring to the bird's pattern of black and white feathers. The crow, which lives in a large geodesic dome at Nic's home, can even talk and loves to sit on people's heads. Nic added that the bird is very friendly but said he still makes guests wear sunglasses if they go into the crow's domain to protect their eyes. "He does have a sharp beak and talons and things like that, but no one has been hurt," he said.
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As part of his effort to explore "all the elements," Nicolas Cage "explored the element of water" by getting his scuba diving certificate on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, he confirmed. "Air, I didn't really get as far as I wanted to — I wanted to be a hang glider but it didn't happen. Fire, I felt like [in my movie] 'Ghost Rider,' I had explored the element of fire," he said. "Then, I wanted to explore earth." Keep reading to find out how he wanted to do that…
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Contrary to popular belief, Nicolas Cage didn't buy a bat cave, but he did almost once purchase a cave in North Dakota. This was all part of his effort to explore the earth, which is also known as "caving" or "spelunking." While filming the movie "National Treasure" in North Dakota in 2003, Nic heard of a cave that was going up for sale. Naturally, he wanted to check it out. "There are all these stalactites and all these milky quartz-like crystalline walls," Nic explained. "At the time, I was married [to Alice Kim] and I thought I wanted to be in, it looked like unfiltered sake. I thought, 'I want to buy this and just go down to the bottom of the cave and get totally naked with my wife and drink.' In the bottom of a cave in the earth. Needless to say, I didn't buy the cave, it didn't happen and there were no bats in the cave."
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Nicolas Cage confirmed that he did once spent the night in Dracula's castle in Transylvania, Romania. "The fact is he never spent the night in the castle anyway. I think they just say that as a tourist thing," the actor said of the famous vampire, "but I did spend the night there."
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This one didn't lend itself to much conversation, but Nicolas Cage confirmed he was once stalked by two mimes. This true story was "so weird" and confusing, Nic admitted. "They had Marcel Marceau makeup and they were mime-slapping each other," he told Jimmy Kimmel. "I think I was their only audience."
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It's pretty common knowledge that Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Coppola, but a comic book character actually influenced his name change. While chatting with Wired, Nicolas said he decided to change his name after "Apocalypse Now" came out in 1979, a film that was directed by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. One of the most memorable lines from the movie was: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." At the time, people "would not stop saying things like, 'I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning,'" Nic recalled. "It made it hard to work. I decided I don't need this, so I changed it to Cage." He added, "It's a combination of Luke Cage from Marvel Comics, which was a character I liked, also named Power Man, and John Cage, the avant garde composer. [It] speaks volumes about everything I've been up to ever since."
