And as for how he landed on the moniker, Nicolas shared that he drew inspiration from Marvel superhero Luke Cage and America composer John Cage.

“‘Cage’ is a name that I liked coming across in the comics—I just thought he had a cool name—and I grew up in a very avant-garde, artsy family,” he explained, “and there was talk about John Cage and the experimental compositions that he did.”

“I was looking for something like ‘James Dean,'” he continued. “I was looking for something short and sweet.”

For his first name, meanwhile, the Longlegs star—whose dad was August Coppola—decided to keep it unchanged, but noted that he didn’t always love the more uncommon spelling. 

“I thought, well, I’ll keep the name ‘Nicolas’ because my father named me Nicolas—with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an ‘h,'” he said. “I don’t know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.”