"Even by Bel Air standards, the Christmas party in the tent at Nicolas Cage’s mansion was a major to-do. The pool was covered up. Blocks of ice were brought in and carved into a buffet table, from which an extravagant array of shellfish was served. A production crew blew fake snow. There were enormous nutcracker men, 8- to 10-feet-tall, out by the gate in front of the house. Lighting specialists came by and illuminated Cage’s favorite cars, which sat on display in the driveway. Guests at the December 2003 event included Hugh Hefner and Jay Leno, who later called it the greatest Christmas party he’d ever been to."
And that's just the opening salvo from The Daily Beast against Cage on his journey to tax evasion and bankruptcy! Let's continue...
The morning after, staffers arrived at Cage’s house and were surprised to find a straggler roaming the backyard: a young pony that had been given to Cage by a relative the night before. Later, he moved the pet out to his ranch in Malibu. But today, the property in Bel Air is in contract to be sold for less than half of what Cage was originally seeking. The personal chef who orchestrated the evening? Laid off. The decorator? Gone as well. Someone is to blame! And that would be Cage's former money manager, Samuel J. Levin, getting sued for $20 million.
Whether the actor proves his former money manager is at fault remains to be seen, but as several sources close to the actor reveal a person whose appetite was extreme even for Hollywood.
Until fairly recently, Cage’s primary residence was the 1940 Bel Air mansion, with eight bedrooms, a theater, wine cellar, and a library. The house’s previous owners included Dean Martin and Tom Jones. When Cage first put it on the market a few years back, the asking price was more than $30 million. He later dropped the price in half, and finally put it up this September in a sealed bid sale, where only offers above $9.95 million were considered. A source close to the sale says it went for less than $15 million. Some argue that the economy may not be the only reason the house went for so much less than Cage had desired - “a Gothic mausoleum” is how one guest describes its décor in recent years.
Cage’s two mansions in New Orleans have been foreclosed upon and will be auctioned off later this month. The first, a 13,000-square-foot, six-bedroom house in the Garden District, was originally put on the market for a reported $3.45 million. The second, on Royal Street in the French Quarter, went on sale for $3.5 million and has been described as one of the most beautiful houses in the city, though there are rumors it’s inhabited by ghosts - though no one knows if it is haunted by his deceased bank accounts or his old hair pieces. They are among more than a dozen other homes Cage has bought in the last decade or so, in places like Newport Beach; Venice Beach; Malibu; San Francisco; Middletown, Rhode Island; New York; and Las Vegas. There was a castle near Bath, in England, an 11th-century estate in Etzelwang, Germany, and not one but two Bahamian islands, which Cage bought in their entirety. The bulk of those properties have been sold or are in the process of being sold.
Cage also had a serious car and motorcycle habit, which is more expensive than say, heroin or crack, but you can still get burnt by a hot pipe. ByJune 2004, he owned 18 motorcycles and 30 cars, a member of his entourage says. Two other sources say the car total was around 50. In 1997, Cage spent nearly half a million dollars on a Lamborghini Miura SVJ that had been owned by the shah of Iran and was confiscated from the Imperial Garage during the 1979 revolution. Never mind that at the time he bought it, the car was trading for an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 - hence the term "dumb as an actor". He kept the cars in a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, where neighbors with their own hangars included Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Cruise, and Charlie Sheen (though sheen also kept dead hookers in his).
The most useless display of Cage’s conspicuous car consumption? A 1955 Jaguar D-Type that he decided to put on exhibit in his billiard room at the Bel Air house, where it was lit from above, like something out of a car dealership. There was also at least one expensive motorcycle sitting in the foyer, according to three people who visited the house. Cage did not limit himself to vintage cars, which are typically better investments than new ones. At one point, Cage was allegedly snapping up new cars at a rate of about “one per month.” For a time, the actor also employed a full-time car mechanic, whose job was solely to service his cars.
Cage’s penchant for acquisition was aided by the fact that for years, many of the things he spent money on appeared to be good investments. The vintage cars he bought frequently doubled in value, so Cage made a lot of money buying and selling them. (In his case, most sales were followed by more purchases). Real estate was seen as an even safer bet. When the first few houses he bought began to accrue in value, Cage began to borrow heavily against them to buy more properties. Unlike the cars, though, he didn’t do nearly enough selling, which placed him in a particularly precarious position when the market began to collapse over the last two and a half years. And nevermind that there were two yachts and a Gulfstream jet.
Until he sold them in 2002 for a reported $1.6 million, Cage was also a voracious comic-book collector. The most prized of these included Action Comics #1 (which contained the first appearance of Superman), and Detective Comics #38, (which was the first strip in which Batman’s sidekick Robin appeared). For safekeeping, Cage housed them at his Bel Air pad in museum-like glass cases. Three people who visited his house also report seeing shrunken heads. None is sure whether they were actual people’s heads (which are illegal to import) or simply those of animals (which generally are not).
Cage’s pet collection? In addition to a handful of purebred dogs, there were rare birds and a host of lizards, snakes, and other creepy crawlies. He also had two albino King Cobras. There also was a dinosaur skull that Cage purchased in 2007 for $276,000 in a heated auction with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Certainly, Nic Cage was a man without an ordinary idea of living on a budget. From the early days of his career, Cage displayed a taste for the finer things in life—which he shared with just about everyone around him. One crew member from the 1993 film It Could Happen To You said they were dispatched to caviar hotspot Petrossian in New York to get takeout for the star and a few people on the set. “It was something like $2,000 for a snack.” His largess was even more pronounced with the women he became involved with. During his divorce proceedings from Lisa Marie Presley (Cage married her in August 2002 and filed for divorce 108 days later), it emerged that in the course of one of the couple’s fights, Presley’s $65,000-plus engagement ring was tossed over Cage’s California-based (yes, they have locations) yacht, the Weston. There are conflicting reports about who threw it overboard, but Cage nevertheless hired divers to recover it. The ring was never found.
There have also been acts of extraordinary generosity. In 2005, he gave $1 million to the Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, Amnesty International put out an announcement that Cage was giving the organization $2 million.
From time to time, Cage also cut his price drastically to appear in smart, ambitious films such as Adaptation and Matchstick Men. But working for less money didn’t prompt him to live cautiously. In The Weather Man, made for an overall budget of about $22 million, Cage played a dowdy meteorologist, yet the actor still brought his personal chef with him to the set in Chicago and got himself a brand new Lamborghini that spent most of the film shoot sitting unused at the Peninsula Hotel. Soon after, he star got rid of the car and bought something new. Another time, two sources report, Cage spent over six figures on a Bentley, then sent it to be fitted with custom cabinetry in the back. The renovation costs totaled more than $50,000, but when it was done, he couldn’t sit in the back because of the space the modifications took up.
In 2008, Forbes reported that Cage had run into trouble with the IRS for allegedly using his production company to write off $3.3 million in personal expenses, including “limos, meals, gifts, travel, and his Gulfstream.” Sam Levin, his money manager at the time, told the magazine such expenses were “customary” in the entertainment industry and were necessary for his security. Cage reportedly was forced to pay back taxes of about $666,000, far less than the feds were seeking. But he fired Levin. Around the same time, Cage was putting scores of properties on the market—just as the market was crashing. In 2009, the government came after him again for his taxes, this time for more than $6 million. The bill does not appear to have been settled yet.
The morning after, staffers arrived at Cage’s house and were surprised to find a straggler roaming the backyard: a young pony that had been given to Cage by a relative the night before. Later, he moved the pet out to his ranch in Malibu. But today, the property in Bel Air is in contract to be sold for less than half of what Cage was originally seeking. The personal chef who orchestrated the evening? Laid off. The decorator? Gone as well. Someone is to blame! And that would be Cage's former money manager, Samuel J. Levin, getting sued for $20 million.Whether the actor proves his former money manager is at fault remains to be seen, but as several sources close to the actor reveal a person whose appetite was extreme even for Hollywood.
Until fairly recently, Cage’s primary residence was the 1940 Bel Air mansion, with eight bedrooms, a theater, wine cellar, and a library. The house’s previous owners included Dean Martin and Tom Jones. When Cage first put it on the market a few years back, the asking price was more than $30 million. He later dropped the price in half, and finally put it up this September in a sealed bid sale, where only offers above $9.95 million were considered. A source close to the sale says it went for less than $15 million. Some argue that the economy may not be the only reason the house went for so much less than Cage had desired - “a Gothic mausoleum” is how one guest describes its décor in recent years.
Cage’s two mansions in New Orleans have been foreclosed upon and will be auctioned off later this month. The first, a 13,000-square-foot, six-bedroom house in the Garden District, was originally put on the market for a reported $3.45 million. The second, on Royal Street in the French Quarter, went on sale for $3.5 million and has been described as one of the most beautiful houses in the city, though there are rumors it’s inhabited by ghosts - though no one knows if it is haunted by his deceased bank accounts or his old hair pieces. They are among more than a dozen other homes Cage has bought in the last decade or so, in places like Newport Beach; Venice Beach; Malibu; San Francisco; Middletown, Rhode Island; New York; and Las Vegas. There was a castle near Bath, in England, an 11th-century estate in Etzelwang, Germany, and not one but two Bahamian islands, which Cage bought in their entirety. The bulk of those properties have been sold or are in the process of being sold.
Cage also had a serious car and motorcycle habit, which is more expensive than say, heroin or crack, but you can still get burnt by a hot pipe. ByJune 2004, he owned 18 motorcycles and 30 cars, a member of his entourage says. Two other sources say the car total was around 50. In 1997, Cage spent nearly half a million dollars on a Lamborghini Miura SVJ that had been owned by the shah of Iran and was confiscated from the Imperial Garage during the 1979 revolution. Never mind that at the time he bought it, the car was trading for an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 - hence the term "dumb as an actor". He kept the cars in a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, where neighbors with their own hangars included Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Cruise, and Charlie Sheen (though sheen also kept dead hookers in his).
The most useless display of Cage’s conspicuous car consumption? A 1955 Jaguar D-Type that he decided to put on exhibit in his billiard room at the Bel Air house, where it was lit from above, like something out of a car dealership. There was also at least one expensive motorcycle sitting in the foyer, according to three people who visited the house. Cage did not limit himself to vintage cars, which are typically better investments than new ones. At one point, Cage was allegedly snapping up new cars at a rate of about “one per month.” For a time, the actor also employed a full-time car mechanic, whose job was solely to service his cars.
Cage’s penchant for acquisition was aided by the fact that for years, many of the things he spent money on appeared to be good investments. The vintage cars he bought frequently doubled in value, so Cage made a lot of money buying and selling them. (In his case, most sales were followed by more purchases). Real estate was seen as an even safer bet. When the first few houses he bought began to accrue in value, Cage began to borrow heavily against them to buy more properties. Unlike the cars, though, he didn’t do nearly enough selling, which placed him in a particularly precarious position when the market began to collapse over the last two and a half years. And nevermind that there were two yachts and a Gulfstream jet.
Until he sold them in 2002 for a reported $1.6 million, Cage was also a voracious comic-book collector. The most prized of these included Action Comics #1 (which contained the first appearance of Superman), and Detective Comics #38, (which was the first strip in which Batman’s sidekick Robin appeared). For safekeeping, Cage housed them at his Bel Air pad in museum-like glass cases. Three people who visited his house also report seeing shrunken heads. None is sure whether they were actual people’s heads (which are illegal to import) or simply those of animals (which generally are not).Cage’s pet collection? In addition to a handful of purebred dogs, there were rare birds and a host of lizards, snakes, and other creepy crawlies. He also had two albino King Cobras. There also was a dinosaur skull that Cage purchased in 2007 for $276,000 in a heated auction with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Certainly, Nic Cage was a man without an ordinary idea of living on a budget. From the early days of his career, Cage displayed a taste for the finer things in life—which he shared with just about everyone around him. One crew member from the 1993 film It Could Happen To You said they were dispatched to caviar hotspot Petrossian in New York to get takeout for the star and a few people on the set. “It was something like $2,000 for a snack.” His largess was even more pronounced with the women he became involved with. During his divorce proceedings from Lisa Marie Presley (Cage married her in August 2002 and filed for divorce 108 days later), it emerged that in the course of one of the couple’s fights, Presley’s $65,000-plus engagement ring was tossed over Cage’s California-based (yes, they have locations) yacht, the Weston. There are conflicting reports about who threw it overboard, but Cage nevertheless hired divers to recover it. The ring was never found.
There have also been acts of extraordinary generosity. In 2005, he gave $1 million to the Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, Amnesty International put out an announcement that Cage was giving the organization $2 million.
From time to time, Cage also cut his price drastically to appear in smart, ambitious films such as Adaptation and Matchstick Men. But working for less money didn’t prompt him to live cautiously. In The Weather Man, made for an overall budget of about $22 million, Cage played a dowdy meteorologist, yet the actor still brought his personal chef with him to the set in Chicago and got himself a brand new Lamborghini that spent most of the film shoot sitting unused at the Peninsula Hotel. Soon after, he star got rid of the car and bought something new. Another time, two sources report, Cage spent over six figures on a Bentley, then sent it to be fitted with custom cabinetry in the back. The renovation costs totaled more than $50,000, but when it was done, he couldn’t sit in the back because of the space the modifications took up.
In 2008, Forbes reported that Cage had run into trouble with the IRS for allegedly using his production company to write off $3.3 million in personal expenses, including “limos, meals, gifts, travel, and his Gulfstream.” Sam Levin, his money manager at the time, told the magazine such expenses were “customary” in the entertainment industry and were necessary for his security. Cage reportedly was forced to pay back taxes of about $666,000, far less than the feds were seeking. But he fired Levin. Around the same time, Cage was putting scores of properties on the market—just as the market was crashing. In 2009, the government came after him again for his taxes, this time for more than $6 million. The bill does not appear to have been settled yet.
Nic Cage-bear does not like your financial advice!
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