L'Italo-Americano

It's always been difficult to put a label on super star Nicolas Cage, he's known for his crazy antics on and off the screen and yet he retains a likeability that has made him one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Just recently he was honored with the Ischia Legend Award at Ischia Global Film & Music Fest in Italy. Everybody knows his relation to the Coppola family, a name that starting out Cage saw as an excessive baggage, hence the need for a stage name inspired MICHAEl TRAvERSA L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2014 www.italoamericano.com 20 by a superhero he once saw in Marvel Comics. So far Nicolas Cage has had a marvelous career, always taking an unex- pected turn. When he was start- ing to get recognized for quirky roles and eccentric characters, like the one in Vampire's Kiss, he decided to explore his roots, taking part in the Italian produc- tion Tempo di uccidere, set when Ethiopia was an Italian colony, alongside Italian actors Ricky Tognazzi and Giancarlo Giannini. After he won the Oscar in 1995 for Leaving Las Vegas, thanks to the intensity he brought to the role of an alco- holic screenwriter on a suicide mission, he reinvented himself as an action star in box office hits like The Rock and Face/Off. The two things couldn't have been more far apart, yet Cage always justified his choices by the desire to diversify his roles and explore different paths as an actor. "I'm always trying to make things eclectic", he said. Always a sports car lover, he accepted to do the picture The Family Man only if he could drive a Ferrari, so the 550 Maranello was incorporated into the script by director Brett Ratner who was willing to do anything to secure Cage's partic- ipation to the picture. His com- mitment to the characters has often been defined as method acting taken to the extreme. The actor even has a name for it, Nouveau Shamanic (as in shamans, who get into a trance state). Some stories behind his roles are well known, like the time he ate a live cockroach to show insanity or the time he would walk around the set in voodoo face paint and pitch black contact lenses keeping to himself, even on breaks. For the wartime romance Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which he plays a soldier sent to the Greek island of Cephallonia during the Italian occupation of World War II, he flew with his vocal coach to Venice, Italy over several weekends. He then spent a lot of time listening constantly to locals speaking. Once on set he kept his just learned Italian accent throughout the whole shoot, with great regard to not offend anybody, especially when interacting with the authentic Italians in the cast and crew. Some of his latest choices in movies have been heavily criti- cized, many fans saw them as just a paycheck and films like The Wicker Man failed to con- nect with audiences. Nonetheless if his movies become a huge success or don't make too much money at the box office, it almost doesn't matter, what is important is his ability to always surprise the audience. Cage and I recently met while he was pro- moting the animated feature The Croods, his latest endeavor to which he provides the voice of the main character Grug. One thing he said really stuck with me. He explained how his acting process has changed now that he's about to be 50 years old. When he has to do a feature film nowadays he needs two months of preparation to learn the whole script, everybody's part. He can- not just get two pages of dia- logue to memorize the night before. "I need to have the whole script into my body in order to live the character on screen and not having to think about it", he said. When he does animation it's the opposite, "I want to go in completely blank and have spon- taneity when I read the lines for the first time". With this new approach to the craft of acting it seems Cage has stepped yet again into a whole new direction and personally I can't wait to see where it will take him. Nicolas Cage Nicolas Cage – A ramblin' mind Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck

• Cover