Among the most accomplished actors in Hollywood, perhaps no one is as interesting as Nicolas Cage.

Cage won Oscar’s Best Actor when he was only 32, the 5th youngest winner in history. At his heydays, he starred in the biggest action movies and was one of the highest earners in Hollywood. Then in the last decade, his name was mainly associated with bad movies and cheap productions, as if he had forfeited his talent to just make a living by playing any role thrown his way.

The start of Cage’s movie career wasn’t easy. Born Nicolas Kim Coppola, he is the nephew of the auteur Francis Ford Coppola. (The director of Godfather, one of the best films ever made.) Not wanting to be connected with such a big name and risk being accused of nepotism, Cage changed his birth name to Nicolas Cage and determined to make a career on his own.

Cage studied theater at high school but dropped out at 17. His first part was a short appearance in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982). It didn’t work out too well and Cage ended up working a job selling popcorn at the Fairfax Theater, with the thought that he could still stick close to the film circles.

In 1983, Cage auctioned for his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s work Rumble Fish and landed a role. In the same year, he appeared in another movie Valley Girl, and his movie career was launched. In 1987, Cage starred in the romance comedy Moonstruck alongside singer/actress Cher, winning him a Golden Globe nomination and legions of female fans.

Moonstruck (All pictures are from IMDb photo gallery)
But what won Cage more admiration from his fans is his sheer dedication to his job. No matter what role he plays, including in those lamest movies in recent years, he always acts his part with utter passion. The craziest thing Cage did was in a 1988 movie Vampire’s Kiss. He ate two live cockroaches for a take, in order to bring out the realness of insanity for the role (a man bitten by a woman thinks he is turning into a vampire).

Vampire’s Kiss

Beginning from the 90s, Cage’s career reached a new high. In 1990, he starred in David Lynch’s movie Wild At Heart, a road thriller that also showcased Cage’s acting talent. In 1995, Cage’s portrayal of an alcoholic screenwriter in the movie Leaving Las Vegas won him the Best Actor in a lead role at Oscar, bringing him to the apex of his career.

Leaving Las Vegas
In the glory days that stretched the ensuing decade, Cage was cast in a myriad of blockbuster action movies, starting with Michael Bay’s The Rock in 1996 that also featured Sean Connery and Ed Harris. The movie was a huge hit, earning US$134 million in the US and US$201 million internationally at a production cost of US$75 million. It is still considered one of the best action movies of all time and the best work of Michael Bay.

The Rock
Following the success of the movie, Cage took the lead roles in Con Air and Face/Off in 1997, both of which are hits at the box office. With a dozen more swashbuckling movies in the following 10 years, including hits like Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), National Treasure (2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), Cage became one of the most recognizable faces in the action genre.

In between, Cage occasionally collaborated with famous directors and played serious roles in critically acclaimed movies, such as The Family Man (2000), Adaptation (2002), Matchstick Men (2003) and The Weather Man (2005). Adaptation brought Cage his second Oscar nomination for the Best Actor, proving that he was still a brilliant actor.

Adaptation
With money lining up his pockets, accolades and fame, Cage was the A-lister that any actor would dream to be. But he couldn’t hold on to his fortune. He made wrong choices in his life and squandered his money on the most exotic and extravagant purchases.

A CNBC report chronicled some of Cage’s biggest purchases: 15 high-end residences including a US$25 million property in California, a US$15.7 million estate in Rhode Island and an US$8.5 million house in Las Vegas; two castles in Europe worth a total of US$12.3 million; a deserted island in Bahamas for US$3 million. He also spent US$150,000 on a pet octopus and US$276,000 on a dinosaur skull.

The extreme profligacy came at a steep cost. Cage faced foreclosures on a few properties and owed the US government US$6.3 million in property taxes. His worth shrank to US$25 million from US$150 million. He also went through two divorces between 1995 and 2004.

The waste of money not only ruined his fortune, but his career. More accurately, he lost his power to pick his roles. The last time Cage was the lead in a blockbuster movie that made a mark at the box office is the sci-fi thriller Knowing in 2009. Produced at a cost of US$50 million, the movie pulled in US$80 million in the US and US$183.6 million in international markets.

Knowing

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 2010 marked the beginning of Cage’s demise as a money-raking movie star. The fantasy movie was made with a whopping budget of US$150 million, but it fared poorly at the domestic box office, taking in only US$63 million in the US, not even enough to cover half of the production cost. Luckily, the international box office totaled US$152 million, saving it from a complete flop.

Season of the Witch in the following year was not any better. Though it was a much smaller production compared to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, it made little impact on the box office, pulling in only US$24 million in the US. The combined global result is US$91.6 million, hardly a hit by today’s standards.

Then it went on with a long streak of poor films. Drive Angry (2011), Trespass (2011), Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011), Rage (2014), Left Behind (2014), Dying of the Light (2014), The Runner (2015), Pay the Ghost (2015), Dog Eat Dog (2016), USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016), Arsenal (2017), Vengeance: A Love Story (2017). None of these is a commercial success and most of them are hated by critics and fans alike, even leading to some of his fans decrying the loss of a great talent.

But Cage is only 53 years old this year. He still has a long career ahead and a pretty good shot at being great again. He might even win another Oscar. After all, Cage has proved again and again, he is an extraordinary actor. For now, let’s just hope Cage will stop taking roles left and right, and set his mind to something great.