Nicolas Cage on being a nepo baby: “I felt the burden”
The issue of nepotism has plagued Hollywood for years. It reflects the fact that, at its very core, the film industry is corrupt, perpetuating class disparities in the creative industry. While you can’t help being born to someone famous, many actors, filmmakers and writers have emerged with little genuine talent, using their family name as a way to get into an industry they, realistically, aren’t cut out for.
One of Hollywood’s many downfalls is its elitism and lack of opportunities for anyone without connections to the industry. The widespread nature of nepotism is disheartening, and it remains a highly controversial topic, but can we paint all nepo babies with the same brush? For every nepo baby who really shouldn’t be given acting or directing opportunities (Nicola Peltz, Lily-Rose Depp), there are many who have proved themselves as incredible stars, such as Laura Dern, Jamie-Lee Curtis and most of the Coppola clan.
Francis Ford Coppola, the director responsible for some of cinema’s most iconic movies, like The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, has a large family tree, with most of his relatives involved in cinema in some way. There’s his daughter, Sofia Coppola, a talented filmmaker in her own right; his sister, Talia Shire from The Godfather series, and her actor children, including Jason and Robert Schwartzman; his son, Roman Coppola, a frequent Wes Anderson collaborator; and his nephew, Nicolas Cage.
Cage, who was born Nicolas Kim Coppola, changed his name due to his associations with one of the film industry’s most well-known families. The actor has gone on to have a very successful career, honing a distinctive persona and appearing in a wide range of movies, from David Lynch’s Wild at Heart to John Woo’s Face/Off and, more recently, a self-parodic satire, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Yet, at the beginning of his career, he found it difficult for people to separate him from his famous family, despite the fact that most of his early acting roles were in Coppola’s films, like Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club. His first role, however, was in Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where many of his castmates reportedly teased him. Talking to Playboy, Cage called his nepotistic status a “mixed blessing.”
He explained, “I started acting when I was 17 and my fellow actors didn’t accept me. They said I was there because of Francis Coppola. These actors know who they are. I felt I had to work twice as hard as the next guy to prove myself.”
The actor revealed that he felt the “burden” of being related to Coppola before detailing his experience of filming Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “The actors would congregate outside my trailer and recite a version of Robert Duvall’s line from Apocalypse Now: ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’ But they said, ‘I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning.’”
Cage revealed that he’s had the desire to act ever since he was little, even before he understood his uncle’s job. “See, I knew something that no one else could possibly know. I knew that I had wanted to act long before I knew anything else.”
He added, “I knew it as a six-year-old boy sitting on the rug in my living room, fantasizing about how I could get inside the TV and be one of those people. It was a coincidence that my uncle was a great director.”
