Book of Secrets releases right before Christmas.  What are the Cage holiday traditions and what are you doing to celebrate?
This year, I’m going to do something new.  I’m going to have a Dickens Christmas.  I’m going to take everyone to England.  I’ve never done that, and I want to just walk around Bath and see how they celebrate the holidays.  I’ve always fantasized about that.

Why Bath?
Because when I’m in Bath I feel like I’m walking around a snow globe.  I’m in this contained, beautiful, historic universe.  Everybody’s really, really nice, and I don’t have to use a car and I can walk everywhere.  I feel like I’m in touch with the past and world events and history—I’m going to other places and I’m learning things.  It’s helping me grow.

Are you going to have a Christmas goose?
I’m going to try and have a Christmas goose—absolutely.

What is the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?
Hands down, it was a tool to stimulate my imagination.  My father was on sabbatical in Italy, and I had a little toy car that was being driven by Pinocchio. For whatever the reason, Pinocchio’s head fell off, the day before Christmas.  I had played with it too roughly.  My father picked up the head, and he went into the garden and he planted it.  I thought, 'Why are you doing that?’  The next morning, there was this enormous thing that had grown in the garden.  I ripped it open and it was a giant wooden Pinocchio.  I was scratching my head trying to figure out how that grew.  Then I started planting everything.  I planted all my Hotwheels. I had a little G.I. Joe slipper.  I thought if I planted that it would grow really big, and I could put my sleeping bag in it.  So he really got me thinking at a really young age and using my imagination.

How has being a parent of a young child changed your perspective on your work and on the choices you now make as an actor?
Well, children—especially from one to six—are so impressionable.  The main priority is to just make sure they’re happy, as much as possible.  That’s our job, to make them as happy as we can possibly make them, in my opinion.  Because we know that as soon as they get older, things start happening.  There are pressures and hormones and all that.  So in the beginning, you want to keep them as happy as possible for that wonderful magical period of time.  And that means movies that are positive.  He [Nicolas' son] likes Yellow Submarine and the Beatles and the Wiggles and that’s great.  There is plenty of time to discover the other stuff, and I’m sure he will if he’s like the rest of my family.  In terms of choices, I try and make movies that will hopefully do some good for the whole family.



Starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Helen Mirren and Jon Voight, National Treasure:  Book of Secrets is rated PG (violence and action) and releases in theaters nationwide on Friday, December 21, 2007.  Click here for more information.