this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
305 points (94.5% liked)
Not The Onion
20547 readers
1739 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Reading this, I was reminded of how Nicolas Cage is part of the Coppola family but changed his name, I was told, so that he could “make it on his own.”
I looked that up and it turns out to be a complete lie. He actually changed his name to conceal the fact that he was not making it on his own.
From Wikipedia:
how does changing his famous last name conceal that he was not making it on his own? what?
He was given roles in his uncles film because he was his nephew. The name change just swept this under the rug. He wanted to get the roles but not let anyone know he got them through favoritism.
this comment makes sense, but your original comment said something else that was genuinely confusing.
I guess it could be interpreted ways other than I intended, but since I know how it was intended, it’s kind of hard for my brain to successfully see how.
somehow it seemed like you were saying that he was trying to hide that he was failing at making it on his own, which is confusing in a couple directions. anwyay sorry for taking up your time. i meant well and wish you the best. :)
But his latter movies are awesome and I love him, so I'll let it slide.
Yeah I like him too. The only asterisk on that is that I guess I might like some other actor better who didn’t have a family “in”
"To avoid the appearance of nepotism" sounds exactly like making it his own. You seem to have misunderstood. Are you an LLM?
The appearance of nepotism.
Nicholas Coppola got cast by his uncle, when any random 15 year old aspiring actor would never stand a chance.
He then changes his name so that other people in Hollywood will (hopefully) not say “oh he got that part because he’s Coppola’s nephew,” even if he absolutely got that job because he’s Coppola’s nephew.
I'm not disputing that he got his first few roles due to his connections, but changing his name absolutely would have distanced him from his relatives in other directors' eyes.
Nah, everyone in the industry would know about this. But random people on the street wouldn't. And that's what it's about when you want to be famous.
No it wouldn't/didn't, but it would/did to the masses.
You have misunderstood. He was in fact the beneficiary of nepotism: starting in his uncle’s films. But to keep this a secret, he changed his name. He was hiding the nepotism, not trying to avoid nepotism.
Walk a little more softly. You came off as confidently wrong there.
ive seen quite a few actors recently try to do this or trying to downplay thier nepotism.