Nicolas Cage and his wife, Riko Shibata, welcomed their first child, a daughter, on September 7, 2022. Because the actor and his child are nearly six decades apart in age, their childhoods will be drastically different in more ways than one.

This isn’t the actor’s first rodeo, as he already has kids Weston, 31, and Kal-El, 16, from two prior relationships. He may be reminded of his own upbringing now that he is the father of August Francesca Coppola Cage. Nicolas was born on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California, to parents who had no idea how successful their son would become. August Vogelsang, his father, was a comparative literature professor, and Joy Vogelsang, his mother, was a dancer and choreographer.

Cage, who died in June 2021, opened out about his mother’s mental health issues.

“She was plagued with mental illness for most of my childhood,” Cage explained.

“She was institutionalized for years and was subjected to shock treatments.

“She would go into these long-lasting moods. She went through these poetic periods, I don’t know what else to label them.

“As it is preventable by antipsychotic medications and additional support.”

While schizophrenia “had some impact” on Nicolas, he added: “For me, acting was a means of harnessing destructive energy and creating something good with it.

“Rather than turning it on myself or others, I put it on film and created characters to express anger or despair.”

Windtalkers, starring Nicolas Cage, premieres on ITV4 on Monday, September 12 at 9 p.m.

“She would utter the most incredible things, beautiful but terrifying. I’m sure they had an impression on me.”

Cage remembers seeing his mother in the “institutions” when he was “very little,” describing it as the “hardest phase” of his boyhood.

“We had to walk down a long hallway to visit Mum, past people tugging at us,” he recalled.

“In the end, she was always there, sitting and waiting… She never intended to harm anyone. “The most difficult part was seeing someone I care about the struggle.”

To describe her ongoing mental health problems, Cage’s mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is classified as a “serious, long-term mental health disorder” by the NHS.

Symptoms can range from auditory and visual hallucinations to delusions, when a person has “unusual beliefs not based on reality”.

Schizophrenia can also lead to “muddled thoughts based on hallucinations or delusions.”

Symptoms of schizophrenia
Loss of interest in daily activities
You are unconcerned about your hygiene.
Avoiding people, including friends.
Treatment can include a combination of medications and individual therapy.

To get ahead of an “episode,” milder symptoms to spot can include:

Feeling suspicious or fearful
Worrying about people’s motives
Hearing quiet voices now and again
Finding it difficult to concentrate.

“Recognising the initial signs of an acute schizophrenic episode can be useful,” the NHS states.

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