Nicolas Cage likes to make people happy.
And judging by his box office draw, he's doing a right job.
Now starring in "Bangkok Dangerous," out nationwide today, Cage says he picks his roles based on the challenge and the entertainment value for both him and his audience. (The motion-picture show was non screened for critics.)
After organism in the business for more than 30 geezerhood, he's trying to celebrate things interesting by "climax in with this new idea to think more globally, more internationally in my life and in my work."
In "Bangkok Dangerous," identical Chinese brothers Danny and Oxide Pang directed Cage, 44, in Thailand.
Sitting down with "Popcorn With Peter Travers" on ABC News Now, Cage famed that his wife, Alice Kim, whom he married in 2004, is Korean and he'd recently through with films with Australian and German directors.
"I think it's always fascinating when you see different races and different cultures interacting on film," he said.
In "Bangkok Dangerous," Cage plays a hired assassin who falls for a woman patch on the job. It's a character, he said, with a lot of "karmic weight unit" thanks to his less-than-upstanding career.
Cage said he has seen some of 1999's original "Bangkok Dangerous," which was as well shot by the Pang brothers, adding that he wanted the new version to be different, more fresh, more than complex.
If he wanted complex, he got it -- on jell, anyway.
"I think the Pang brothers real had some inside playfulness with me because I couldn't assure them apart," he said, with a laugh.
They would switch turns in the director's chair each day, asking "Who am I?," Cage said.
It was his second time working with a twin of brothers; Joel and Ethan Coen directed him in 1987's "Raising Arizona." While the Coens aren't twins, they do share some genial of brotherlike telepathy. Cage remembered observance one brother, without saying a parole, hand a cigarette in arrears him just as the other was reaching for it. He dubbed Ethan Coen the "funny" one.
Cage got his start as an actor struggling against his famed last name: Coppola. Nephew of fabled director Francis Ford Coppola, he plant that potential drop directors and producers were turned off by his last name, figuring his place in the movie would total to zip more than Hollywood nepotism.
He opted to change his last list to determine work on his possess merit, picking the last name of a comic book character, Luke Cage. But that was only after a few false starts.
"I was Nicolas Blue, I was Nicolas Faust, whatever that means," he said, laughing.
In the early days, he said, "I was actually someone scrap for my survival. I didn't know where I was going to live. I was living out of my car."
After dropping ill and landing in the hospital, Cage promised himself that he would go on one final audition, and if that didn't work on out, he'd become a fisherman, or something like it.
He got the part.
As a child growing up in Southern California, Cage said he would ideate himself on set, walk to school visualizing crane shots in his head. It was a product of his imagination kinda than his family ties.
"I had no idea what my uncle did," he said.
Once he became a working role player, Cage asked Coppola what made a good actor.
"He said, 'Just the downright personality of the someone, of the performer,'" Cage said. "And he's right."
Cage aforesaid it eventually sunk in that he could really do it, really make it as an worker when director Martha Coolidge cast him in 1983's "Valley Girl" without wise to his heritage, he said.
The same thing happened for 1984's "Birdy," though Cage said director Alan Parker later told him that he would not take hired him if he knew approximately the Francis Ford Coppola connection.
Despite devising a name for himself on his own, he has gibe movies with his uncle, including 1983's "Rumble Fish."
He smiled, memory how his uncle forced him do 53 takes of a scene in which he simply looked at his watch.
"It's been 30 old age," he aforementioned, "and rarely do I go past times 10."
Cage said he has a rule about trying to pace outside the boundaries of a lineament. When he signed on to do Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married," he didn't need the role. Only afterwards his uncle promised him he could voice the character care Pokey -- of Gumby fame -- did he agree. And then nearly got fired for doing so.
His ideas about how a role should sound nearly got him booted off the set of "Moonstruck" a few old age later, Cage recalled.
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