BEVERLY HILLS -- As an actor, Nicolas Cage is a chameleon.

As a celebrity, he's even more elusive.

How else can you explain the public surprise that greeted the news Cage and his wife Alice Kim Cage had out-Appled Gwyneth Paltrow by naming their newborn son Kal-el -- which, for those of you without a subscription to Entertainment Nerdly, happens to be Superman's Kryptonian moniker?

True, Cage is an Oscar winner and a nephew of Francis Ford Coppola. But he also once gobbled a live cockroach for a movie and borrowed his own surname from Luke Cage, the Marvel Comics superhero. What did people expect him to name his child? Bradley?

But then, we as an audience have never been sure what to expect from Cage -- a fine quality in an actor, but a rarity in a movie star. In maintaining that balance, Cage has achieved his own dual identity of sorts. He is both the acclaimed eccentric unafraid to spring surprises (Adapt-ation, Leaving Las Vegas) and the Hollywood he-man unafraid to entertain (The Rock, Con Air, National Treasure). No wonder he adores a guy who pretends to be a geek when he can actually lift locomotives.

Says Hope Davis, who plays his wife in their new dark comedic drama The Weatherman, "He's really not like other people. He marches to the beat of a different drummer. (Working opposite him) he's very unpredictable. He's always coming at it with a new twist, so it was really interesting. He's extremely inventive."

And when cameras aren't rolling? "He's very funny and fun to talk to."

Speaking to media during a press conference to promote The Weatherman -- for the record, two weeks prior to the birth of his son -- the 41-year-old actor reveals a third alter-ego, that of gracious if guarded celebrity.

When one journalist brings up the topic of method acting, Cage responds, "I have my own method and that's life."

Opening Friday, The Weatherman stars Cage as Dave Spritz, a dopey, dour Chicago TV forecaster who is a joke to viewers, his ex-wife (Hope Davis), his kids and even his stern, studious father (Michael Caine), for whose approval he pines.

Given Cage's admission that life and art are irrecoverably entwined, one wonders what dark days Cage was going through when he signed on for the part -- a far cry from the adventurer he played in last year's hit National Treasure or the swaggering arms dealer he essayed in the still-in-theatres Lord of War.

"At the time I agreed to do The Weatherman, I was going through a divorce," he says of his split from Lisa Marie Presley.

"And I was trying to figure out how to take it and turn it into a positive.

"Reading the script, I thought, here's a parallel to my life. Sometimes I choose movies that can help me like therapy -- you do something positive with a negative emotion. So I took this well of feeling I had and funneled it into Dave Spritz."

However the parallels between Cage and Spritz don't end with just the dissolutions of their respective marriages. (Cage clearly rebounded -- he married his current wife in July 2004 after they met at a restaurant where she was working as a waitress.)

Cage's character, like the actor, is famous -- even if this brand of fame is smaller and somehow odder. The film's running gag sees Spritz -- the target of public ridicule and scorn -- pelted with food by strangers as they speed past in their cars. Milk shakes. Soda. McNuggets. You name it -- he gets it hurled at him.

Spritz theorizes this is a reaction to the public believing he's overpaid and underworked. And, as he freely admits, they're right.

Has Cage ever dealt with hostile, milkshake-hurling fans?

"I wish I could be colourful and say (I get things thrown at me) all the time," he says. "But never -- at least not from somebody I've not met. Yes, there have been times when girls have thrown glasses at me and things like that."

He adds, "I try to make an effort to meet people well. Fans are very important to me. I know what it's like to admire someone and then when you meet them, have them be complete, well, jerks."

More relatable for Cage was Spritz's relationship with his impossible-to-please father, played by Caine.

"I think that no matter what walk of life we come from, we all have that connection with our father. We are small and they are big and we have this awesome regard for them. My dad is a professor of literature ... so I had this intimidating aura of growing up with a university professor."

That said, contrary to what you might expect, his father supported Cage -- then Nicolas Coppola -- when he decided to leave high school to pursue an acting career. "School was not a good match for me. I said, 'This isn't for me. I want to work. I want to act.' "

With his father's blessing, Cage got his equivalency and high school diploma "and went right to work."

He's barely stopped working since.

"I do about two movies a year. I like to do something with my time and be productive and I believe I'm serving myself and serving you by working. I'm not going to sit around a pool and luxuriate."

After wrapping a remake of the horror thriller The Wicker Man Cage shot in Vancouver this summer, he is set to topline Oliver Stone's 9/11 project.

Cage will star as Sgt. John McLoughlin, one of two police officers trapped in the rubble after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The movie is due out next year in time for the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Cage, who says he has spent time with McLoughlin and his family, says the film will "feel like real time unfolding. It's going to smack of reality and feel as real as it can ... The buildings themselves aren't (shown) ... The movie's about what happened amongst this handful of men when the buildings came down."

Audiences will first see Cage as the title character in next summer's Ghost Rider, based on the Marvel Comic. It marks the first time the well-known comic book aficionado has gotten his wish to star in such an adaptation. (He'd previously come closest a decade ago when he nearly starred as the Man of Steel in a Tim Burton-directed Superman project that was scuttled at the last minute.)

Was it a challenge to take on the role?

Cage replies, "Well, it's very simple and it may sound strange, but I am Ghost Rider. It wasn't that challenging ... He's a man trying to take a negative and turn it into a positive ... Johnny Blaze has this horrible thing happened to him and he's going to take that negative and make it a positive, no matter what."

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