Nicolas Cage on New Love, New Movie

L O S   A N G E L E S, Aug. 16, 2001 -- It's been a wild ride for actor Nicolas Cage. He introduced his new film and his new girlfriend to the world in the same week he cemented his status as a movie star.

The actor showed up at the premiere of Captain Corelli's Mandolin in Beverly Hills with his latest flame, Lisa Marie Presley.

It was a big night for stargazers since Cage's co-star Penelope Cruz also showed up with her new beau — Tom Cruise, who is only recently divorced from Nicole Kidman.

"I guess the producers must have been happy that night," Cage told Good Morning America today. "I don't know how that lined up for them… I guess the luck of the draw."

Feeling Like a King?

Cage, who sang like Elvis in the film Wild at Heart and dressed as Elvis in Honeymoon in Las Vegas is now dating Elvis' daughter.

When asked about rumors that he impersonated Elvis on his own answering machine, he chalked it up to suspicious minds.

"No, no, no! I don't know where that story came from, but I'd like to strangle somebody," Cage said. "I've never done that in my life."

But while Cage may not be the King, he has made it to the big time. Twenty years after his movie debut as a bit player in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he added his prints to the Forecourt of Stars in front of Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Tuesday.

"It's something I've always sort of dreamed about," says Cage. "When I was a kid [we] would come down to the Grauman's Chinese Theater, and I'd see the hands and feet, because I grew up here, and I used to live not far from there, right around Hollywood Boulevard."

In his new film, Cage plays a music loving, opera singing Italian captain who falls in love with a local girl in Greece during World War II.

"I've never been in these sort of large scope epic dramatic films and I thought it was time to try to do that," Cage said.

Although he has been in more than 40 films, including Moonstruck, Leaving Las Vegas and Raising Arizona, Cage says he is still has a lot to learn about acting.

"I see myself very much as a student of acting still," he said. "And I think if I take roles like Captain Corelli, where I have to speak in an Italian accent and learn how to play a mandolin and march like an Italian soldier — there's a lot that could go wrong. But maybe, maybe something will go right, and I'll learn."

From Coppola to Cage

In high school, Cage, whose birth name is nicolas Kim Coppola, was known as Nicky Coppola. The nephew of director Francis Ford, he borrowed his new professional name from a comic book.

"I love comic books, I learned to read because of comic books, they were the only thing that interested me enough to want to actually read" he says. "Luke Cage was an African-American superhero named 'Powerman,' and I just thought he had a cool name. 'Luke Cage' that was a cool name to me."

He says he discovered that he might be a good actor while riding the school bus one day.

"I was being beaten up by the high school bully on the back of the bus because my mother would pack these Hostess cupcakes, and he knew I had them," Cage recalled. "And every day he would grab my lunch sack and take the cupcake. I remember I went home one day, and I just said I can't do this any more."

A much younger Cage put on his older brother's cowboy boots, sunglasses, slicked back his hair, and wore tight jeans before posing as his cousin.

"I went on the bus and I said that I was Roy Wilkinson, 'And I'm Nicky Coppola's cousin, and I'm here to kick your a-- if you pick on him again,'" Cage said. "The guy bought it. He never bothered me again, which was very strange. But I knew then that I guess I might be able to act."