Nicolas Cage Makes His Stage Name His Legal Name and Says He Would Rather Lead His Own Family Than Be a “Clown Cousin”

Nicolas Cage has spent more than four decades as one of Hollywood’s most distinctive presences — an Oscar winner, a box office star, and a performer whose range has stretched from “Leaving Las Vegas” to “National Treasure” to “Adaptation.” He has also, for most of that career, been carrying a name that was not legally his own. Until last year.

Cage, born Nicolas Kim Coppola on Jan. 7, 1964, is the nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and the cousin of director Sofia Coppola. When he began his career in the early 1980s, he adopted the stage name “Nicolas Cage” — inspired by Marvel Comics’ Luke Cage and composer John Cage — to avoid the advantages and expectations that came with the Coppola name. He was first credited as Nicolas Coppola in the 1982 film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Every credit since has read “Nicolas Cage.”

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In a recent interview with Variety, promoting his upcoming series “Spider-Noir” and the theatrical film “Madden,” Cage disclosed that what had been a professional name for more than 40 years is now his  legal name. The disclosure answered a question many had assumed was long settled.

The reason he gave was characteristic Cage — candid, quotable, and entirely his own. “I am Nick Cage. I changed my name legally last year,” he told Variety. “I’m Nick Cage in life, and I’m Nick Cage on camera. ‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little  family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else’s, so I decided I’m going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.'”

It was a line that landed immediately — and made people look back at a decision made 40 years ago in an entirely new light.

Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola (2002) (IMAGO / Rideaux-PicturePerfect)

The story of how Nicolas Coppola became Nicolas Cage is one of the most telling decisions in Hollywood history. As a teenager in the early 1980s, Cage was sent to live with his uncle Francis Ford Coppola and the director’s wife Eleanor for a year in Napa Valley, California, after his parents divorced. He was put into a local school, felt out of place, and watched his grades collapse. The experience shaped him — but so did the name.

When he began working on film sets, the Coppola connection followed him everywhere. “People would not stop saying things like, ‘

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I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning,’

he told Wired in 2022, referencing a famous line from “Apocalypse Now” — his uncle’s film. “It made it hard to work, and I said,

‘I don’t need this,’ and changed it to Cage.”

For four decades, the professional name held. His résumé reads like a testament to what he was able to build on its foundation: an Academy Award for “Leaving Las Vegas” in 1995, a Golden Globe, and a career that has oscillated between prestige films, blockbusters, and cult favorites in ways no other actor of his generation has quite managed.

Now the name is legally his — not just professionally. He has three  children: Weston, born in 1990; Kal-El, born Aug. 3, 2005; and daughter August Francesca Coppola Cage, born Sept. 7, 2022, with his wife Riko Shibata, whom he married in February 2021. The Coppola name lives on in his daughter. The Cage name, finally and formally, is his alone.

Nicolas Cage (2026) (IMAGO / ZUMA Press)

Did you know Nicolas Cage had only recently made the name change legal? Do you think it was the right decision? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and other Nicolas Cage fans out there!

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