Born Nicolas Kim Coppola, the actor known Nicolas Cage famously attended his earliest auditions under that pseudonym, telling Vanity Fair “I wanted to create a kind of wild and artistic and bizarre image,” one separate from his internationally famous uncle, director Francis Ford Coppola. The Oscar-winning actor, who is currently starring in Amazon Prime series Spider Noir, finally made that name change official last year, the 62-year-old said in a new interview, after a long life with a double identity.

Speaking with Variety, the newly-minted official Cage said “I am Nick Cage. I changed my name legally last year. 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,” the self-aware star said. “So I decided I’m going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.’”

Though he’s gone by the “Cage” last name since his role as Randy in 1983’s Valley Girl, the actor was still eager to explain how he chose his last name. “’Cage’ is a name that I liked coming across in the comics — I just thought [Luke Cage] had a cool name — and I grew up in a very avant-garde, artsy family and there was talk about John Cage and the experimental compositions that he did. I was looking for something like ‘James Dean;’ I was looking for something short and sweet.”

“I thought, well, I’ll keep the name ‘Nicolas’ because my father named me Nicolas — with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an ‘h,’” Cage said of his father August Coppola, a longtime professor at San Francisco State University. “I don’t know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.”

The 2025 name change might not be Cage’s last. When told that “Nick Cage” sounded more like a superhero than “Nicolas Cage,” the comic book lover paused. You think I should’ve shaved it off and just made it ‘Nick?’” he asked, before moving on. “I’m both!” he exclaimed. “I think people know me as both.”

Originally published in Vanity Fair Italy