Though haunted by cries of nepotism early in his career, engaging, sleepy-eyed American star Nicolas Cage, nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, led anything but a charmed existence growing up amidst the placid suburban comfort of Long Beach, California. His mother's hospitalizations for severe depression kept her away from the family for long intervals, and his parents' subsequent divorce, coupled with his adolescent feelings of "dorkiness" made it easy for him to identify with James Dean's outsider status in 1955's "East of Eden.”