Nicolas Cage says goodbye to birth name in unexpected reveal

Nicolas Cage has officially rewritten the credits on his own life.

The Oscar-winning star revealed that he has legally dropped his birth surname, confirming that he is now, officially, just “Nick Cage” – on paper and off it.

“I am Nick Cage. I changed my name legally last year,” he told Variety. 

“I'm Nick Cage in life, and I'm Nick Cage on camera. ‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else's, so I decided I'm going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.' ”

Born Nicolas Kim Coppola, Cage has long existed in the shadow of Hollywood’s famous Coppola dynasty – a fact he says he’s now fully done with.

“I thought, well, I'll keep the name ‘Nicolas' because my father named me Nicolas — with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an ‘h,' ” he said, adding with characteristic Cage energy, “I don't know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.”

The surname “Cage” itself is not random. The actor has previously said it was inspired by Marvel’s Luke Cage and composer John Cage – and chosen because it felt “short and sweet,” in the spirit of classic Hollywood icons.

“I decided, I don't need this, and I changed it to Cage,” he previously told Wired. “It's a combination of Luke Cage from Marvel Comics ... and John Cage, the avant-garde composer. Speaks volumes about what I've been up to ever since."

Despite the change, Cage says he does not mind what people call him now.

“I'm both! I think people know me as both,” he added. The newly minted Nick Cage now moves forward with a busy slate, including the upcoming series Spider-Noir and the NFL biopic Madden.

Same legend – just with a cleaner name tag.