From US Weekly magazine.
 
COUPLES
They have three failed marriages and three children between them, but NICOLAS CAGE and LISA MARIE PRESLEY are giving love another chance
By SarahSaffian
ELVIS MAY HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING 24 years ago, but the King's spirit was surely
n the air on July 10 in Memphis, Tennessee. His 33-year-old daughter (and only
child), Lisa Marie Presley, and Nicolas Cage, her boyfriend since April, were on hand at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Presley Place for the homeless. The 12-unit, rent-free apartment complex was fully funded by Elvis Prelsey Enterprises (EPE) -- which regulates the licensing and marketing of everything bearing Elvis's name and image -- with 1.3 million raised at a 1999 auction of Elvis memorabilia in Las Vegas. More than 300 spectators stood by in the 100-degree heat waiting for the star couple to arrive.
STARTING OVER
Soon Cage, 37, emerged from a black stretch limousine and greeted the crowd with a small smile and a friendly wave. The star of Moonstruck, Face/Off, Con Air and The Family Man was there to support Presley, the owner and chairwoman of EPE, who emerged from behind a curtain to cut the ribbon with the same gold-toned scissors that her mother - Elvis's ex-wife - Priscilla Presley used to open Graceland, the former Presley home, to the public in 1982.
Dressed in a midriff-baring print blouse and low-riding black leather pants, Presley gave a short, gracious speech, concluding with a quote by her father, which is also printed on a plaque at the Presley Place entrance: "All any kid needs is hope and the feeling he or she belongs. If I could do anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world."
The ceremony was deeply significant for Presley, for not only did she demonstrate her continuing commitment to her father's legacy, but she also showed that she was serious about Cage. Both stars are exceedingly private, even by Hollywood
standards, and this was one of the few public appearances they have made sine they quietly began dating two months after meeting Presley's thirty-third birthday party in Los Angeles on February 2. Both were otherwise involved at the time - she with fiance John Oszajca, 26, a Hawiian-born rock musician, he reportedly with Penelope Cruz, his costar in Captain Crelli's Mandolin, which opens on August 17. But by spring, Cage and Cruz had parted ways, as his divorce from Patricia Arquette became final (Cruz has since moved on to Tom Cruise), and Presley had given the ring back to Oszajca.
By May 25, Presley was accompanying Cage and his brother Christopher Coppola, a
director, to California State University at Fullerton, where Cage received an honorary doctorate. It was an emotional moment for the actor: "My father is a professor, and I've always wanted to be able to achieve something like this," Cage
said, "This has really been one of the best days of my life." For her part, Presley declared the degree "fantastic." A few weeks later, in early June, the couple reportedly were surprised when they attended a Tom Jones concert in Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel and the singer - a close friend of Cage's - saluted them from the stage.
Soon, rumors about the couple were in full swing. One had it that Cage and Presley - who had assumed control of her $100 million inheritance at age 30 - planned to escape from the glare of Hollywood by turning Graceland back into a private residence for themselves. Presley spent her first five years at Graceland and stayed there regularly after Elvis and Priscilla split in 1973 and mother and daughter moved to Los Angeles. Presley's 56-year-old mother was said to be "horrified" that the mansion, to which more than 600,000 visitors flock each year, would be closed to the public.
That story was soon discredited. Insiders pointed out that Presley had recently augmented the official tour of Graceland with a 45-minute audio narration of recollections about her father -- "Whenever he would come down the steps, you could always tell," she says. "He would have on many jewels or something, and he rattled down the steps" -- as well as home movies, including footage from her first Christmas at the mansion. "Closing or selling Graceland has never been considered, nor are there any plans at all for Lisa to reside at Graceland," a spokesperson for EPE told US weekly.
Still, Cage probably wouldn't mind spending a night or two at the place where Elvis ate his famous peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, shot at television screens with one of his many guns whenever a program displeased him, and died of a heart attack in 1977 at age 42.
A rabid Elvis admirer from way back Cage, like his idol, has a penchant for wearing black leather and riding motorcycles, and he reportedly imitates the King in the outgoing message on his answering machine. His obsession even prevades his acting: He sang "Love Me Tender" and "Love Me" as an ex-convict in Wild at Heart (1990) and was a sky-diving Elvis impersonator in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992).
In Captain Corelli's Mandolin, based on a best-selling 1994 novel by Louis de Bernieres, Cage moves far beyond Elvis-y-shtick, playing an Italian Army commander who falls in love with a woman (Cruz) on the Greek island of Cephalonia during World War II. But according to the film's director, John Madden, Cage is never simply a leading man or simply ANYTHING. "In this role, he travels from being
an off-center Romeo to a self-lacerating, introspective Hamlet," Madden says. "Nic works without a safety net."
Like his girlfriend, Cage has talent in his genes. The youngest of three brothers, he was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California, on January 7, 1964. His father, August Coppola, was a professor of comparative literature; his mother, Joy Vogelsang, was a dancer and choreographer. Cage studied theater at Beverly Hills High but dropped out at age 17 (like Lisa) to make his film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) though most of his performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. He changed his name early n his career -- inspired by Luke Cage, a 1960's comic-book superhero with bulletproof skin-so as not to ride the coattails of his uncle director Francis Ford Coppola or his grandfather composer Carmine Coppola. For a while after Fast Times, he sold popcorn at the Fairfax Theater in Los Angeles until a job reading with actors auditioning for Coppola's 1983 movie Rumble Fish led to a role in the film. Uncle Francis wasn't trying to do him a favor. Cage's restless talent was too striking to ignore. "To be a good actor, you have to be something like a criminal," said the man who would later eat a live roach in Vampire's Kiss (1989). "[You have] to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new."
In his personal life, Cage has been equally eager to defy convention. He owns a red Lamborghini that used to belong to the Shah of Iran and lives in a fake castle, complete with turrets, high in the Hollywood Hills, saying by way of explanation, "I got a really good price on it. Nobody wants to live in a castle." Elvis would be proud. But Cage is never more his own man than when it comes to affairs of the heart. The day that he met Patricia Arquette, at Canter's Deli in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, he asked her to marry him. Taken aback, she jokingly concocted a scavenger hunt o fhard-to-find objects that he would have to collect in order to win her over a black orchid, a J.D. Salinger signature, a tribal wedding dress from Tibet- but when Cage actually started making his way through the list, Arquette became nervous and broke off their relationship.
Cage was then romantically linked to actors Jenny Wright and Uma Thurman and model Kristina Fulton, with whom he has a 10-year-old son, Weston Coppola Cage (Arquette also has a son, Enzo, now 12, with rock musician Paul Rossi). After Cage
split amicably from Fulton in 1994, Arquette called him out of the blue and proposed to HIM; they were married in April 1995. "If a woman asks you to marry her, you must say yes and stay with her forever." Cage said at the time. "I married a woman who is my friend and also the person I would want to be if I were a woman." But by 1999, the marriage had turned rocky, and Cage filed for divorce in February 2000, claiming that the pair had separated after the first nine months of their almost 5-year marriage. Despite years of appearances at premieres and parties as a happy couple, Cage reportedly lived by himself in his castle while Arquette, 33, kept a Studio City apartment in L.A. But another twist followed: Five days after filing for divorce, Cage withdrew his suit, and the couple reconciled. However, the reunion didsn't stick, and in November of 2000, Arquette, amid rumors that Cage and Cruz had become involved offscreen during the filming of Corelli's, filed her own suit. Their divorce became final on May 18. "My little-girl idea of being married is quite different than [marriage] really is," Arquette has said. "I think marriage is harder than being a parent."
And so, at that birthday party in February, Cage-though arm in arm with Cruz-was nursing a broken heart, as perhaps was Presley, feeling the strain in her relationship with Oszajca. Though only 33, she was already a twice-divorced mother of two. At age 20, Lisa Marie married musician Danny Keough, and they had two children, Danielle, now 12, and Benjamin, 8. A month after their divorce in April 1994, she shocked the world by marrying Michael Jackson in a secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic; their unlikely union was scrutinized and mocked during its 20-month span. Then, in May 1999, mutual friends introduced Presley to Oszajca, and by that Christmas, with Priscilla's blessing, they became engaged. Since their breakup, according to Presley's publicist, they have remained "very good friends."
Professionally, the devout Scientologist is following in her father's footsteps - HER FIRST ALBUM OF GUITAR-DRIVEN, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL original ROCK songs is being released early next year. Billy Corgan, the former lead singer of the now-disbanded Smashing Pumpkins, cowrote one of its songs. "The first thing I was struck by when I heard Lisa Marie's demos more than two years ago was her voice-she has her father's pipes," Corgan has said. "She's crafted an album of her own personality, and people will be surprised by how good it is."
Meanwhile, the Elvis heir and the Elvis aficiondo appear blissful in their budding relationship. On July 25, the pair arrived via private jet in Washington, D.C. and dined at the Palm, where Cage devoured the surf-and-turf special for two. The next day, they attended a ceremony at which President Bush awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to four of the five surviving Navajo code-talkers from World War II (Cage stars in Windtalkers, a film about the Native Americans who conveyed messages for the U.S. military that will be released later this year).
According to his represntatives, Cage has no plans to join the Church of Scientology, but a friend of Presley's has said "I don't think that matters to her."
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