Cage Ducks Divorce Questions, Pushes Films

Dec. 10, 2002 -- All work and no personal questions make Nicolas Cage a happy man.

Just a week after Cage filed for divorce from Lisa Marie Presley, he met reporters in New York, eager to talk about his two new films but unwilling to talk about his 108-day marriage.

Presley and Cage were last seen together in public on Nov. 23, holding hands at a screening of Adaptation in Los Angeles. Two days later, he filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences" in court papers.

Now, the 38-year-old Oscar-winning actor is busy promoting two projects, Adaptation, in which he plays twins, and Sonny, the tale of a male prostitute that marks his directorial debut.

"Creatively, I'm in a very happy place," he told reporters. "I'm re-inspired when I think about acting and future projects."

As for his divorce, he's not talking.

"I don't feel as though I have any responsibility to talk about my personal life," Cage said. "It's not fair to the people who aren't here."

A Practiced Silence

Cage was once candid about his private life, talking in detail years ago about his mother's struggles with mental illness. But he made it a policy not to talk about his private life during his first marriage, to actress Patricia Arquette. They divorced last year.

Nevertheless, Cage's initial attraction to Presley came as no surprise. He's always been an Elvis fanatic. At one point he even considered building a replica of the King's Graceland mansion in California.

Just after the couple's Aug. 10 wedding in Hawaii, the newlyweds even slept in Graceland to mark the 25th anniversary of the bride's father's death.

What did surprise stargazers, however, was when Cage sold off his prized comic collection — which included the 1938 first issue of Superman — for a cool $1.5 million. The whisper in Hollywood was that Presley forced him to sell the collection because it took up too much space, and that the couple was fighting over where to live and whether to have children.

Now Presley, 34, is saying the marriage was a mistake. "We shouldn't have got married in the first place," she told reporters.

Presley has two children, Danielle, 13, and Benjamin, 10, from her six-year first marriage to musician Danny Keough. Her celebrated marriage to Michael Jackson lasted just 20 months and ended in 1996.

‘Like a Scared Child Going to School’Cage now wants the world to know him through his work. In Adaptation, which opened Dec. 5, he plays Charlie Kaufman, a self-tortured screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and resentment toward his freeloading twin brother, Donald (also played by Cage).

But Cage might have more on the line in Sonny — where he will be judged as a first-time director.

"There was a feeling I had when it started of being like a scared child going to school for the first time," he said. "It was daunting."

About 15 years ago, Cage was offered the lead role in Sonny, but the film was never made. He rescued the script from limbo two years ago, when the threat of a prolonged screen actors' strike led him to contemplate alternatives. Now, Spider-Man star James Franco plays the lead, a male prostitute in New Orleans who is desperate to leave his past behind.

"I can't imagine anyone else playing the part after seeing James play it," Cage said. "If I could have been this good, I would have been proud." The film opens in New York and Los Angles on Dec. 27.

It was just after Cage considered playing Sonny, back in the mid-1980s, that he took on his breakout performance in Raising Arizona. His Oscar-winning turn came in 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, playing a hard-core alcoholic who falls in love with a prostitute while drinking himself to death.

Becoming one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading men, Cage turned to a series of action-adventure roles in big-budget films like The Rock and Con Air. But his recent projects have been disappointments.

Gone in Sixty Seconds, with Angelina Jolie, lived up to its title. He followed that with Captain Corelli's Mandolin, another bomb. Earlier this year, Windtalkers took in $41 million at the box office — less than half of its $115 budget.

Still, Cage presses on, satisfied that he can continue to develop quirky projects like Sonny — now as a filmmaker as well as an actor.

"I created this thing, and it's out there and it has a live of its own," he said. "That's really where the satisfaction is."