Nicolas Cage

One of the best-known actors in Hollywood, Nicolas Cage has quite the story behind his stage name.

The ‘Longlegs’ star - whose real name is Nicolas Coppola - took inspiration from the Marvel Comics character Luke Cage, as well as musician John Cage when it came to creating his own Hollywood identity to separate himself from his famous director uncle Francis Ford Coppola.

He said: “I changed my name because I was doing a little movie called ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ and I was still Nicolas Coppola, and people would not stop saying things like, ‘I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning,’ because of ‘Apocalypse Now’, and Robert Duvall saying, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ and it made it hard to work. I said, ‘I don’t need this,’ and changed it to Cage. It’s a combination of Luke Cage from Marvel Comics, who was a character I liked, also named Power Man, and John Cage, the avant-garde composer."