How Nicolas Cage Lost His Fortune

Nicolas Cage is a man filled to the brim with eccentricity and expressiveness. His life reads like a plot from one of Hollywood's hammiest action blockbusters, which coincidentally, may be the reason he's made a career out of them. The star owned the most haunted house in America, bought a stolen dinosaur skull, woke up in the middle of the night to discover a naked trespasser eating a Fudgesicle in his bed, was bailed out jail by Dog the Bounty Hunter, and was victim to a multi-million dollar comic book heist that's going to become an actual movie. Oh, he also owned a shark and private island like some kind of comic book villain.

There's not a whole lot leading us to believe Cage's bizarre life isn't the result of him actually being a time-travelling vampire from the 1800s. The only evidence we have against it is the fact he never seemed to warn himself about squandering his $150 million fortune. Maybe he didn't want to ruin the space-time continuum. Who knows? Either way, somewhere between Cage's 50 cars, spattering of European castles, private island, and multi-million dollar mansions, he nearly lost it all. Today, he's worth just $25 million. Here's the true story of how Nic Cage's fortune was gone in sixty seconds (or a few years, for those of us grounded on Earth).

Nicolas Cage may have won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, but that doesn't mean he left Sin City of his own accord. The action hero unfortunately lost his Las Vegas mansion — and a slew of other properties — to foreclosure.

First, there were his two New Orleans properties. Naturally, one of them was allegedly "the most haunted house in America" because that's something the Ghost Rider star would absolutely need. (He told Event Magazine (via The Daily Mail) that he wanted to write "the great American horror novel," but shocker: he "didn't get too far"). According to CNN Money, these homes were worth a combined $6.8 million, and the "haunted" house was later featured in American Horror Story.

After New Orleans, the bank came for Cage's $8.5 million Vegas mansion. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it ended up selling in foreclosure for around $5 million in 2010. That same year, The Los Angeles Times reported that Cage lost his Bel-Air home, which opened at auction for $24.6 million less than the star's initial asking price. We're just guessing here, but the paltry price tag maybe had something to do with the decor, which one real estate agent speaking with the Times described as "frat house bordello." Which, let's be honest, sounds exactly like the kind of place Cage would live and a realistic title of one of his upcoming VOD releases. 

This is one book of secrets Nicolas Cage probably wished he never opened. After the star was hit with a massive tax lien, he decided to sue his former business manager, Samuel Levin, over his dismal finances. According to CNN, the lawsuit claimed Levin "lined his pockets with several million dollars in business management fees while sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin." Cage asked for $20 million in damages.

Levin painted a completely different story. He claimed Cage was already "deeply in debt" when he was hired in 2001, and urged the Face/Off star to stop buying real estate and start creating a $10 million "cash cushion." The cushion was meant to help Cage avoid reputation-ruining roles. If he heeded the alleged advice, we might have never been left behind with the roller coaster of laughable acting and Christian propaganda that was... Left Behind. Levin reportedly also warned Cage against buying four yachts, a Gulfstream jet, a bunch of Rolls Royces, most of his 15 properties and "millions of dollars in jewelry and art." Hey, what Cage wants, Cage gets. Even if he has to rob the National Archives to get it.

TMZ reports that Cage eventually settled this lawsuit on undisclosed terms.

Nicolas Cage never got to play a Bond villain, yet somehow, so many of his purchases can't be explained otherwise. Who else owns a shark? Or venomous snakes? Some of the Dog Eat Dog star's most bizarre expenditures included a pet collection reads like a straight-to-DVD remake of We Bought A Zoo, but with none of the heartache. Instead, it's the kind of film where Cage goes on a magic mushroom trip with his cat (which is a totally real thing he admitted to doing on live TV).

According to The Daily Beast, the actor had a spattering of rare birds, lizards, and purebred dogs. He also had "two albino King Cobras." Much like someone living in his own Hollywood action movie, Cage allegedly hung the antivenom on a wall just in case the little noodles ever got nippy. According to other reports, he also purchased a $150,000 octopus, a crocodile, and a shark. There's no word on whether or not he used the shark or croc to guard the waters around his private island, but the answer is probably. 

If there's any more proof Nicolas Cage is a real-life action hero, he found himself at the center of a foiled multi-million dollar comic book heist. It's no secret that the star squandered a hefty chunk of his fortune on a multi-million dollar comic book collection. According to CNBC, the star purchased the first Superman comic ever for $150,000. Only around 100 copies are said to still exist.

Cage's ultra-rare copy of Action Comics No. 1 was lifted from his home in 2000. Another $150,000 wasted, or so we thought. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was found eleven years later in an abandoned storage locker, and later sold for a cool $2.1 million, the highest price tag for a comic book in history. It is believed to have been sold on behalf of Cage, although that wasn't verified at the time. So okay, Cage may have actually profited from this outrageous purchase, but it was certainly the exception to the rule. 

The story is so insane (and so patently Cage) that it was ultimately picked up by Lionsgate and transformed into a heist comedy. Action #1 doesn't yet have a release date, but we're crossing our fingers Cage doesn't disappear into a different dimension before then.

For a brief time, Nicolas Cage floated in the upper echelons of Hollywood glory with genre classics like Gone In Sixty Seconds. He took home the Academy Award for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas and was nominated for Spike Jonze's Adaptation in 2003. These days, the star has strayed away from Blockbuster success and found a comfortable home on the small screen with low-budget, VOD releases. These flicks allow the star to take greater artistic risks.

"They've managed to give these kinds of more challenging plots a chance to be viewed," he told The Los Angeles Times. "It gives them a place to exist in some way."

The truth is that most of Cage's extraordinary number of releases since his 2009 tax lien have been panned by critics. Left Behind, which was so poorly rated the first time around it's baffling anyone remade it, maintains a dismal 1% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. His 2012 project on which he served as a producer, A Thousand Words, hovers around 0%. Yet, he's still unafraid to move at an alarming pace. According to The Daily Beast, Cage "hasn't taken a single year off since 1981."

Cage still has some major wins peppered among the failures. The animated flick The Croods brought in a reported a reported $187.2 million domestic, making it one of his biggest hits since National Treasure, and 2018's Mandy, which was lauded by critics, helped restore his credibility one patented emotional outburst at a time.