A Day in the Life of Nicolas Cage, From Feeding His Pet Crow to Watching UFO Shows

When Nicolas Cage, now starring in Dream Scenario,  was the subject of a recent MovieMaker cover story, we asked him to outline his daily routine. Here is that routine.

A typical day in the life of  Nicolas Cage begins at 6 a.m., according to Nicolas Cage. Actually, scratch that — lately he’s been getting up even earlier.

“Sadly, now it’s more like farmer’s hours, 4 a.m.,” he tells MovieMaker in our Spring 2022 cover story. The iconic actor plays a highly dramatized version of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. But he told us his real life is quite normal by comparison.So we asked him: How normal? What’s a typical day?

And he walked us through it.

First, he goes to the gym and does five to eight miles on the elliptical. Then, he turns on CNN.

“I’ll watch the news for about two hours,” he says.

Next, he chats on the phone with some friends before feeding the many creatures that populate his home.

“I have dogs, I have cats, I have Huginn, my crow,” he says.

Huginn is not your typical crow: He’s an African Pied Crow. Such crows are notable for being black all over except for a distinct crop of white feathers positioned in the shape of a bib, like the ones people wear to lobster dinners.

Also Read: Nicolas Cage: The Man, The Myth, The Meme (Cover Story)

“Very intelligent birds,” Cage says. “I’ve always had an interest in natural history and all kinds of animals, especially in the ocean. I have some fish, and I’ve been interested in marine biology. My interests fall within the realm of a combination of biology and theology.”

On Sundays, he watches UFO documentaries.

“My wife actually laughs at me, because usually, for some reason — why, I don’t know — on Sunday, I like to just trip out and watch documentaries about flying saucers and UFOs,” he says with a laugh. “I just like watching people talk about their experiences. I find their behavior so interesting. It does happen more often than not, and I don’t really know the explanation for why — I’ll just go on Amazon Prime and watch… movies about the historical aspect of people seeing flying saucers. I find it oddly relaxing and mystifying and confounding.”

After feeding all of his pets, he devotes much of his day to his children. On school days, he picks up his teenage son, Kal-El, whom he shares with his ex-wife, Alice Kim. His other son is actor Weston Cage, 31, with actress Christina Fulton. Weston and Nicolas Cage, a diehard comics fan, created the comic book Voodoo Child in 2007, when Weston was still a teen. Let no one question Cage’s love of comic books: Besides playing Marvel’s Ghost Rider — twice — he famously named Kal-El after Superman’s name on his native Krypton. And Cage nearly played Superman in a Tim Burton adaptation.

“It’s a pretty normal existence and somewhat unexciting,” Cage says of his life. “It’s not nearly as colorful as the characters I play.”

Main image: Nicolas Cage, courtesy of the Fantasia International Film Festival