Ethan Hawke did Ask Me Anything on Reddit and had this to say about Nic Cage:
I’m kind of obsessed with Nic Cage. I just found out about /r/onetruegod too. He’s the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting; he’s successfully taken us away from an obsession with naturalism into a kind of presentation style of acting that I imagine was popular with the old troubadours. If I could erase his bottom half bad movies, and only keep his top half movies, he would blow everyone else out of the water. He’s put a little too much water in his beer, but he is still one of the great actors of our time.
I’m a huge fan of Nic Cage, despite all the terrible stuff he’s done. When he’s at his best, he’s better than anyone. Birdy, Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas… all have special places in my cinematic heart.
I got addicted to his films in college and spent countless hours hunting down and watching all of his films. Most of my friends at the time were lukewarm to him at best, and my fascination with his work was largely a solo endeavour.
I remember reading a story about how and why he changed his name from Coppola to Cage so that he could build his own reputation outside the shadow of his uncle. Apparently he got the name Cage from a comic book hero, Luke Cage of Power Man and Iron Fist fame.
As a kid I collected Power Man and Iron Fist and I was the only one I knew who did – I spent years collecting a comic that as far as I knew nobody else read – I have never in 30 years since I started collecting met a single person who even knows the series or the heroes, let alone a fan. I still have all those books, and today my set is about 15 issues from being truly complete (every appearance of either character in any series). There is nothing else in my life that I’ve enjoyed so much for so long and so obsessively as that collection, and I’d always felt so alone in my devotion to it.
When these two worlds collided my brain just about melted! Ever since then I’ve felt this little connection to Nic (see, in my mind we’re on abbreviated-first-name-basis), and no matter how many terrible movies he does, there will always be that top half of his movies that made me a fan in the beginning, and I will always think of him as that one other fan of Power Man and Iron Fist out there in the world!