REEVES

famous last words
10
NICOLAS CAGE
“I had been acting since I was 16,
but people often weren’t very nice
since I had the name Coppola. So I
changed it to Cage. I had a lot of
proving to do. I had to feel I was my
own man. I would walk into casting
offices and they’d want to know how
Francis was doing. After I changed
my name, my first audition was for
Valley Girl and I got the part. It was
my first chance to prove I was not
just part of the Coppola dynasty.”
STARS TELL YOU
ABOUT THEIR FIRST PARTS
JULIA ROBERTS “My parents were actors long
ago. They ran a theatre school when we were
little. My mom and dad gave me my first part.”
LIAM NEESON “I studied physics at the
University of Belfast and planned on a teaching
career. While waiting to take the exams I
applied to a small repertory company and got
the job. Two years later, I moved to Dublin
where I joined the Abbey Theatre. The director
John Boorman saw me in a play and cast me
as Sir Gawain in Excalibur.”
BRAD PITT “When I first arrived in L.A. I
started doing work as an extra along with any
odd jobs I could find. About nine months
later, I got a part in Dallas on TV. I did
episodic TV, movies of the week, anything I
could get, and joined an acting class. A
woman in the class had an audition with an
agent. She needed a partner to do a scene. It
was one of those classic stories — I did the
scene with her and ended up with the agent.”
JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME “When I was 17, I
went to the Milan Film Festival. All those
Hollywood people told me, ‘Come to see me,’
BY SUSAN GRANGER
so I came to Los Angeles and ended up
cleaning floors and driving taxis. One day I
saw [writer/director/producer] Menahem Golan
in a restaurant and, later, in the parking lot, I
did a flying kick over his head. He told me to
come to his office. After waiting six hours I
took off my shirt and he gave me a script,
saying, ‘You can play the lead.’”
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS “When they were filming
Sunday Bloody Sunday in South East London,
where I grew up, they needed a lot of hooligans
to go and play football in the park. We
were chosen by a man who ran the local fruit
and vegetable shop. John Schlesinger, the
director, asked to see a group of us and he
chose the three nastiest looking ones for a
special job of scratching a row of very posh
cars with broken glass. I was one of them.”
MERYL STREEP “I was in a play and friends
told me I was good in it, so I went to drama
school and got hooked. Acting has never been
agony for me. I just worked at it, stood in that
unemployment line in Lower Manhattan, and
was cast in a small part in Julia. It was really
like Never-Never Land. It was a quantum leap
famous 46 september 2001
— from making Broadway minimum, $235 a
week, to $2,000. I just couldn’t believe it.”
HARRISON FORD “I was a philosophy major in
college, which prepares you to do nothing but
write or teach philosophy. When I first went
on stage I was terrified…. My first movie role
was in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, in
which I played a bellhop, calling out, ‘Paging
Mr. Ellis!’ I was 24 and I wasn’t even listed in
the credits.”
PAUL NEWMAN “I was so embarrassed about
my first part — the artisan Basil in Ancient
Greece in The Silver Chalice — that I later
took out a full-page ad in the trades apologizing
and urging people not to see the movie. Basil
was designing a silver chalice for Christ to
drink from at the Last Supper. What I’d like
people to think was my first role was Rocky
Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me.”
JANE SEYMOUR “The first film I appeared in
was Oh! What a Lovely War and I had one line.
After the day’s shooting, the director, Richard
Attenborough, said, ‘I think she’s going to
become a star,’ and he signed me up.”
NICOLAS CAGE AT THE PREMIERE OF THE FAMILY MAN. PHOTO BY LUCY NICHOLSON, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE