NICOLAS CAGE IS FEARLESS

He is one of our great actors. Also one of our most inscrutable, most eccentric, and most misunderstood. But as Cage makes his case here, every extraordinary thing about his wild work and life actually makes perfect ordinary sense.

- Gabriella Paiella

FIFTEEN MINUTES FROM the Las Vegas Strip, into a tranquil gated community, up a redbrick driveway, past the palm trees that touch the Mojave Desert sky, through the veil that separates the astral plane, and here he is: the man they say gained and lost a $150 million fortune; who owned castles in Europe and the most haunted house in America and the Shah of Iran's Lamborghini and two albino king cobras and a rare two-headed snake; who had to return his prized dinosaur skull upon learning it was stolen from Mongolia; who went on an epic quest for the actual Holy Grail; and whowhen his singular, fantastical life eventually comes to an endwill be laid to eternal rest in a colossal white pyramid tomb in New Orleans.

Nicolas Cage greets me at his door, wearing a kung fu suit.

“This is my wing chun kung fu suit,” he explains, waving me in and handing me a mug of coffee. “I studied with my sifu, Jim Lau, when I was 12 years old, because I was a big Bruce Lee fan. And so it's like my uniform to relax in."

His voice is a low, contemplative drawl that imbues every word with a sense of philosophical magnitude. To hear Nicolas Cage state an opinion about his preferred loungewear is to hear anyone else reflect on the cosmos.