Nicolas Cage

He was born Nicolas Coppola, nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, and changed his name to Cage (after Luke Cage and John Cage) specifically so directors wouldn't feel upstaged by the Coppola brand above the title. The bet paid off. By 1987, he had Raising Arizona and Moonstruck in the same year, two completely different registers. Leaving Las Vegas got him the Oscar in 1995 for playing a man methodically drinking himself to death. The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off followed in the next two years, which tells you how Hollywood was reading him by then.

The financial collapse is the arc that reframed everything. He burned through a reported $150 million, bought 15 properties including castles in England and Germany and a private island in the Bahamas, and landed with $6.2 million in IRS liens filed in 2009. He didn't file for bankruptcy. He just made movies, dozens of them, many direct-to-video, until the debt was cleared by 2022. The comeback has been real. Pig (2021) earned a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Longlegs (2024) crossed $100 million at the box office, his first film to hit that since 2012. At 60, the scorecard looks better than anyone expected circa 2011.

He had teeth removed for Birdy (1984) to look the part, which is either commitment or a warning sign depending on how you see it. The stranger footnote is Johnny Depp, who was his neighbor in 1984, playing guitar in a band called Rock City Angels. Cage kept pushing him toward acting until Depp finally took the meeting with Cage's agent. That worked out.