Film Star Likes Scene Changes

NICOLAS CAGE, who stars in the upcoming action film “Con Air” and is filming the thriller “Face Off” with John Travolta, has purchased a Malibu home for nearly its $3.6-million asking price, sources say.

Cage, 33, won a best actor Oscar for his role in “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) and, in Montreal last fall, became the youngest actor ever to receive the World Film Festival’s award for lifetime achievement.

Cage plays a parolee involved in a skyjacking in “Con Air,” which is wrapped and due out in June. “Face Off,” about an intelligence agent who has plastic surgery to assume a terrorist’s identity, has a July release date.

Cage has been married since 1995 to actress PATRICIA ARQUETTE, 28, who appeared in “Flirting With Disaster” (1996), “Ed Wood” (1994) and “True Romance” (1993).

Born in Long Beach, Cage grew up in California and lived at times in the Napa Valley with his uncle, director Francis Ford Coppola.

Cage bought a Cape Cod-style home with five bedrooms in nearly 3,000 square feet on about an acre at the ocean. The gated estate has a cobblestone drive, creek and pool.

Built in the 1970s, the house was previously owned by Thomas Gottschalk, a late-night TV talk show host in Germany. Gottschalk, 46, also has appeared in German films.

Gottschalk and his wife, Thea, live in another Malibu house, which he bought a few years ago for about $4 million, a source said.

Cage also owns a castle-style home, built in 1928, in the Hollywood Hills and a Victorian house in San Francisco. He has said that he thinks “having different environments is better, rather than having one huge . . . space that you reside in all the time.”

He rents three apartments, the entire top floor, in a 12-story office building-turned-apartment complex in downtown L.A. The 120-unit complex, which includes low- and moderate-income housing and opened in 1995, was created from early-20th century offices long left vacant.

Cage has said he loves the area because of his anonymity in its urban atmosphere.

Joe Babajian of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills, represented Cage in buying the Malibu house, and Katie Ribnick of the Sands Malibu office had the listing.

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Veteran actor BRADFORD DILLMAN, who appeared in eight roles--more than any other guest star--in the CBS mystery series “Murder, She Wrote,” has purchased a five-acre getaway on a river near Eugene, Ore., for $550,000, a source said. The contemporary-style house has four bedrooms in 3,200 square feet.

Dillman, an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor who has also performed on Broadway, and his wife, former fashion model-actress SUZY PARKER, also just spent more than $300,000 renovating their 1926 Montecito home on two acres. Married since 1963, the couple bought the house in 1968 for $85,000.

Dillman, 66, is planning to play legendary football coach Pop Warner in “The Jim Thorpe Story,” due to start filming in July. The actor’s autobiography, “Are You Anybody?” (Fithian Press, $12.95) has just been published and is being released nationwide.

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GARY WILSON, the 57-year-old co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, has purchased the 2.2-acre property next door to his Holmby Hills home for $5 million, it has been learned. The property was listed in 1989 at $15 million and is the site of a former home of singer Glen Campbell.

The seller, businessman Joel Schur, had bought the property from Campbell in 1983 before razing the main house and building a tennis court, waterfall, swimming pool with 24-karat gold tiles, pool house with a gym, putting green, hillside tram and 3,500-square-foot guest house.

Schur, now 58, had planned to build a 17,000-square-foot main house, but he and his cousin, Stephen W. Porter, bought the Class-A minor league St. Petersburg Cardinals instead.

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JOEL DIAMOND, who has produced gold and platinum records for Engelbert Humperdinck and other artists, has put his Tarzana home on the market at a little less than $1.3 million.

“I’m moving to Connecticut,” he said. “I moved here from Manhattan seven years ago and got married for the first time at the age of 50. Now we have a 4-year-old and want a different life.”

Since the Northridge earthquake, Diamond has refurbished and expanded his house two times, he said, increasing its size from 2,900 to 5,500 square feet.

The gated home has four bedrooms, a gym, media room, waterfall over a fireplace and a glass-block wall backed by neon. The home also has a basketball court, pool and guest house-office with a sauna. Lynne Weiss of Coldwell Banker, Sherman Oaks, has the listing.

A Presidio Heights mansion that has been sold for about $8 million is being described as the most expensive private home sale in the history of San Francisco.

Built in 1928 for the son of 19th century railroad financier Mark Hopkins, the 18-room 12,000-square-foot house was sold by Ann Follis, widow of R. Gwin Follis, a retired chairman of Chevron Corp. He died at 93 in 1995.

Sotheby’s, which just opened an office in San Francisco, was the selling broker.