Why ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ was the most miserable movie shoot of Nicolas Cage’s career: “He was in a really bad way”
The press loves covering troubled movie productions because there’s just so much grist for the mill. This is especially true when a film stars an actor with personal problems or relationship woes, and practically goes supernova if the movie is a romantic drama featuring a beautiful co-star. That’s a recipe for salacious rumourmongering that no outlet will turn down, and it’s exactly what happened during one of Nicolas Cage‘s shoots in the early 2000s. In fact, things got so tough for Cage that he was described as being in a truly bad way.
In the late-’80s, a 23-year-old Cage was at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles when he ran into an 18-year-old Patricia Arquette. He was reportedly so immediately smitten with the future True Romance star that he told her they would get married soon, to which she replied, “No, man, we’ve never even gone on a date. Let’s slow it down.”
The eccentric Cage wanted to prove his devotion, though, so he asked her to send him on a scavenger hunt to track down items she was interested in. Over the next few weeks, her requests – such as JD Salinger’s autograph and a black orchid – began to turn up. Cage wasn’t even deterred by the fact a black orchid isn’t something that exists. To her surprise, he simply turned up at her house with a purple orchid and a can of black spray paint.
“She wouldn’t come out, but I could see her peeking down from the top floor,” Cage told Playboy in 1996. “In my very showy way, I whipped the orchid out of my pocket. Then, I whipped out the paint can and started spray-painting the orchid black.” Was the beautiful young star enamoured with Cage’s borderline stalker-y antics? Uh, nope. “She was freaked out,” admitted Cage. “I rang the doorbell again, and she came down. I just gave it to her, and got back on my motorcycle and left.”
Arquette wasn’t completely put off by Cage’s love-bombing, though, and she agreed to go to Cuba with him. However, they never made it there after an issue with their airline tickets stranded them in Mexico, and they soon went their separate ways. Amazingly, though, in 1995, they bumped into each other again in the very same deli, and this time, they made things count. Indeed, Arquette proved she was just as absurdly romantic as Cage by arriving at his home to propose marriage while “dressed head to toe in black vinyl, carrying a big purple wedding cake.”
Two weeks later, they tied the knot on a clifftop in Carmel, California, before one witness – Carmel’s former police chief – and some sea otters. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a romance that began in such a bizarre whirlwind fashion, though, it was rumoured that their marriage was dead in the water after only nine months. Indeed, it was heavily suspected that the two stars pretended they were still together for the next five years despite repeatedly filing and withdrawing divorce papers.
Arquette didn’t take kindly to these rumours, telling The Telegraph, “There were times when we weren’t living together because we were fighting, but it wasn’t as reported, and I didn’t feel that I needed to explain that.” However, in 2001, their divorce was made official, with Arquette telling Paper magazine, “It’s always hard to make that decision to get divorced. We’ve both moved on with our lives.”
Unfortunately for Cage, he was shooting the period romance Captain Corelli’s Mandolin the entire time the gossip rags were writing about his marriage going up in flames. Louis de Bernières, the author of the book the film was based on, revealed in 2023, “Nic Cage was going through a horrendous time, so I was totally sympathetic about that. But he had to fly back to California every week, and he was in a really bad way.”
To make matters worse, a rumour gained traction that Cage was having an affair with co-star Penélope Cruz, and this secret tryst contributed to the end of his marriage. Both stars repeatedly denied it, and Cage told Cinema.com, “I’m not thinking about what the press writes about my marriage because no one knows the truth except Patricia and I, and neither of us is going to discuss our problems in public.”
Heartbreakingly, Cage revealed that he and Cruz tried to laugh off the rumours and dismiss them as par for the course, but admitted, “It’s hard to have a sense of humour about those stories if it affects people around you and creates a false impression.”
