Nicolas Cage Explains Why He Legally Changed His Name After 40 Years
Nicolas Cage has been Nicolas Cage on screen for more than four decades. As of last year, he is legally Nicolas Cage everywhere else too.
The Oscar-winning actor, 62, revealed in a Variety interview published Wednesday that he legally changed his name from Nicolas Kim Coppola — his birth name — to Nicolas Cage in 2025. He has used the name professionally since the early 1980s, but it is only now official on paper.
His reasoning, delivered in classic Cage fashion, was both philosophical and pointed.
"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.'"
The Coppola Shadow
Cage was born into one of Hollywood's most storied dynasties. His father, August Coppola, was a writer and the older brother of Francis Ford Coppola — director of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, and one of the most celebrated filmmakers in American cinema history. Cage's aunt is actress Talia Shire, best known for playing Connie Corleone in The Godfather and Adrian in Rocky. His cousins include Sofia Coppola and Jason Schwartzman.
Few last names in Hollywood carry more expectation than Coppola.
Cage worked under his birth name for his first two screen appearances — a 1981 TV pilot and a small role in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. After that, the Coppola name became a liability he was not willing to carry. People on set would walk up to him and quote Apocalypse Now with his first name substituted in. He found it unbearable.
"People would not stop saying things like, 'I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning,'" he recalled in a 2022 Wired interview, quoting the film's most famous line with his own name swapped in. "It made it hard to work, and I said, 'I don't need this,' and changed it to Cage."
Where the Name Came From
The choice of "Cage" was deliberate and personal. He was drawn to the Marvel Comics character Luke Cage — a superhero with a "short and sweet" name that had the same punchy quality he admired in names like James Dean. His family had also discussed avant-garde composer John Cage, whose experimental approach to music resonated with the artsy, unconventional household he grew up in.
He kept "Nicolas" — with the French spelling his father chose — even though the absence of an "h" has frustrated him for years because people consistently add one anyway.
"I thought, well, I'll keep the name 'Nicolas' because my father named me Nicolas," he explained. "With French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an 'h.'"
What He's Working On Now
The interview coincides with the launch of Spider-Noir, the new Prime Video and MGM+ series in which Cage voices a 1930s noir-era version of Spider-Man Peter Parker. The show premiered this week and has been generating strong early buzz. He is also attached to Madden, a feature film scheduled for release in November 2026.
He has spent more than 40 years building a career distinct from the family name he was born into — winning an Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas in 1996, accumulating one of the most eclectic filmographies in Hollywood history, and earning a reputation as one of the most committed and unpredictable performers of his generation. Making it legal, four decades in, seems less like a dramatic gesture and more like finishing a sentence he started a long time ago.
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