Answer: Nicolas Cage

Adaptation, Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, Face/Off. If you’re a movie trivia buff who is asked what links all these movies together, your first response would likely be: actor Nicolas Cage. Known for his quirky roles and acting, Cage has been cranking out feature films since the 1980s.

Like many in Hollywood, Cage has a stage name. Rather than to jazz up a boring birth name, however, Cage adopted his stage name specifically to downplay just how great his birth name is. Nicolas Cage’s birth name is Nicolas Coppola, son of comparative literature professor August Coppola and nephew of none-other-than famed director Francis Ford Coppola. In a world where who you know often takes precedent over what you know, Cage went out of his way to distance himself from his famous uncle in order to foster a sense that he had made it in Hollywood on his own merit.

That was then and this is now, though, and with nearly a hundred feature films to his name, we think it’s probably safe to be seen in public with Uncle Francis again.