Star Interview: Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage is the first to admit his choice of film roles is somewhat "eclectic".

He's played a gun-toting comic book hero (Kick Ass), a crooked cop (Bad Lieutenant) and is now a flame-throwing master in Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

"I am eclectic," he says, one hand on his signature narrow beard. "My roots are independently-spirited dramatic movies and I will always go back to that world, but I am also interested in the power of the family movie."

This is, after all, the Oscar-winning actor who made a box office smash of Disney's National Treasure films, as treasure hunter Ben Gates.

"When I did the National Treasure films," says the father-of-two, "I started to notice that families were very enthusiastic and they would say 'hello' to me and ask if I was making another one.

"So I decided that one of the better ways to apply myself would be to make movies that could appeal to parents and their children, and then go back and make movies like Bad Lieutenant, because that's how I would stay interested and keep learning."

The 46-year-old may have been making movies since the early Eighties, but he says he stills sees himself as "a student" of film.

It's a refreshingly honest admission and a little ironic considering he's playing the role of a teacher in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

His character, Balthazar Blake, is a former student of the wizard Merlin, who is destined to search the earth for the Prime Merlinean – a descendant of the great wizard with the power to defeat an evil sorceress.

It so happens that this Prime Merlinean is one Dave Stutler, a physics student in New York, and Balthazar must quickly teach him to use his powers.

Cage came up with the idea for the film, based loosely on the magical mops scene in Disney's Fantasia, because he was keen to make a movie about magic.

"You can't really survive in the arts if you don't keep the magical child's mind alive," he says.

"Magic is really very simple. It's about imagination, plus willpower, focused in such a way to create conscious effects in the material world. Every book is a work of magic, every speech that moves people is a work of magic, every movie is a work of magic."

The three-times married actor and nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, knew from an early age he was destined to be an actor.

"I would watch the TV intently and try to figure out how to get inside it from the living room carpet.

"Going to elementary school, I envisaged crane shots of myself which would widen out to show me as

this tiny little boy walking down the street," he says, intensely.

"But it wasn't until I was 15 that I went to the New Beverly Cinema, a little arthouse cinema in LA, and I discovered James Dean in East of Eden.

"The scene where he's trying to give Raymond Massey the money from the beans he sold on his father's birthday blew my mind."

The Sorcerer's Apprentice brings Cage back together with National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub with whom he first became friends at Beverly Hills High School.

"Nic's a rebel, he's anti-authority," says Turteltaub. "He was always looking to break rules and I was always looking to be king of the rules. I wanted more than anything to be popular and probably still today I have that need to be loved.

"If I was a psychologist, I would say Nic has it as well, but his defence when he doesn't get it, is to break away, say, 'It's not my thing' and find another path."

Cage honed his craft at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and landed a small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Sean Penn, being credited as Nicolas Coppola.

He would soon change his name to Cage, apparently to avoid accusations of nepotism in the industry. But he won roles in his uncle's films, Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married.

It was his method-driven performance as a suicidal alcoholic in

1996's Leaving Las Vegas that won him the Oscar, and he gained recognition for roles in big action films, including The Rock and Face/Off, but some of his more offbeat films (Weather Man) have failed to make it at the box office.

Just last year, a US critic called on Cage to leave blockbusters behind and return to drama, but Turteltaub defends his choices, saying: "Nic chooses characters not movies... he's had success because of his versatility."

He splits his time between California and a home in Bath ("I like the rain") with his third wife, Alice Kim and, their four-year-old son, Kal-El, named after superman's birth name.

Aside from acting, Cage is a humanitarian – in December, he was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Global Justice for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and has spent time in Africa.

He says he hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father, a literature professor, by helping others.

"My dad didn't care about money, he wanted to get involved; he was a social worker. So now I'm trying to take up the baton from him and do things I think he would be proud of."

NICOLAS CAGE

He was born Nicolas Kim Coppola on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California.

He married actress Patricia Arquette in 1995 and their divorce was finalised in 2001. A huge Elvis fan, he was married to Lisa Marie-Presley for 108 days before they filed for divorce. As well as Kal-El, he has a son, Weston, from a previous relationship.

He was considered for the lead role in The Wrestler but apparently stepped aside to let Mickey Rourke have the part.

He's now making Drive Angry 3D, about a vengeful father who chases his daughter's killers. "3D didn't really work in the 1950s, so the advent of new technology is exciting."

National Treasure 3 is reportedly in the pipeline as well as Ghost Rider 2.