Patricia Arquette ‘Freaked Out’ When Nicolas Cage Gave Her the First on Her List of Impossible Items to Find

Patricia Arquette was overwhelmed by Nicolas Cage's intense desire to be with her. After proposing marriage to her on the first day they met, Arquette asked him to gather specific gifts to prove his love for her.

In a past interview, when Nicolas Cage was 24, he opened up to PlayBoy about his relationship with Patricia Arquette. Speaking to David Sheff, Cage revealed that the first time he ever felt utterly in love was with the actress.

The "Ghost Rider" star revealed that he initially met Arquette at a deli called Canter's. At the time, the actor was standing alongside Crispin Glover, and they both proposed marriage to the actress on that same day!

It was love at first sight for Cage, but the actress thought he was crazy and didn't believe he meant the proposal. He was so serious about Arquette that he challenged her to put him on a quest where he had to gather whatever she wanted.

If he pulled through, the actress had to agree to marry him. Arquette obliged and gave him a creative and inventive list of non-existent things, which led Cage to believe she was indeed the one for him.

Some of the items she wanted to include were J.D. Salinger's signature, although it was a known fact that the writer hardly signed things. Arquette also wanted one of Bob's Big Boy statues.

The last items she requested were a Lisu wedding dress from the tribe in northern Thailand and a black orchid. The actress made the quest complex thinking this would discourage Cage, but it didn't.

PATRICIA NEVER THOUGHT NICOLAS WOULD FIND THE PRESENTS SHE LISTED

During a November 2018 appearance on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen," Arquette shared how Cage fared on his quest. The actress was quite surprised when her suitor started producing the items she'd asked for, telling Andy Cohen:

“One by one they started coming to me.”

Cage was so determined that he even found out where Arquette lived based on clues she had given him. He looked for a black orchid at a florist but was informed they didn't exist, so he got a purple one instead.

The actor also got a can of black spray paint and then rode to the actress's home. When he rang the doorbell, Arquette peeked down at him from the top floor but refused to come to meet him.

Cage then pulled out the orchid and the spray and proceeded to turn the purple orchid black! Arquette was shocked, and when he rang the doorbell again, she came down; he handed the orchid to he and left, with Cage explaining:

"If I see something I want, I go for it. I won’t stop. I will not stop.”

The next thing Cage got was Salinger's writing or autograph from an autograph store. The shop had a letter Salinger had written to a woman who'd taken care of him while at boarding school.

The note was for sale for $2,500, and Cage bought it and placed it in a cigar box along with a cigar and an apricot. He drove to her house and found Arquette playing hopscotch with friends and left the box in the street and left, leaving the actress thinking:

“OK, all right, just stop. Stop now.”

Speaking to Cohen about the arrival of Salinger's signature, the actress shared how unexpected it was. Arquette confessed to the television show host how she felt at that moment, stating:

“I never thought he’d get it and it scared me.”

NICOLAS ACTED TOO FAST AND RUINED THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH A TANTRUM

The last item on Cage's quest was Bob's Big Boy statue. The star got a chain saw and planned to steal a statue and deliver it to Arquette's front lawn, but she stopped him by informing him they wouldn't get married.

However, the actress agreed to go out with him. When Cage discovered his grandfather was conducting his score in Cuba, he knew his whole family would be there, so he devised a plan to kidnap Arquette from Mexico City and take her to Cuba.

The actor figured he'd get her to marry him before his whole family. However, things didn't go according to plan because they couldn't find his tickets at the Mexican airport, and he threw a temper tantrum.

Arquette got scared by Cage's outburst and his yelling at people. She ended up leaving her three-week relationship with Cage and went back to her previous boyfriend, explaining her actions as such:

“It was too fast and too much for me at that time. I was 19.”

PATRICIA DECIDED TO PROPOSE TO NICOLAS

Cage and Arquette's lives didn't cross for a while, he became a father, and she got married and became a parent. However, the "National Treasure" actor couldn't get the actress out of his mind and saw her face during therapy sessions.

Eight years after their relationship ended, in March 1995, Cage visited Canter's Deli at 2 a.m. and came across Arquette again! Two months later, she called him and then pitched up at his house to propose!

The "Medium" actress rocked up at Cage's house wearing black vinyl from head to toe while carrying a purple wedding cake! The "Face/Off" star said he knew she was the right woman at that moment and revealed his reaction to the proposal saying:

“I said, 'Yes!' I mean, a voice from deep inside just came up and said, 'Yeah, OK, let’s do it.'”

In 1995, the "True Romance" star confessed to The New York Times that she'd been searching for years for a truthful, honorable, and brave man. When she ran into him again, he'd been on her mind; however, she required something from him, stating:

"I needed to be reassured that the depth of his love would be as brave as before."

CAGE AND ARQUETTE'S WEDDING

The couple tied the knot two weeks after being reunited on top of a Carmel, California cliff in April 1995. The two stars got married in a 10-minute wedding ceremony, with Cage dressed in a dark suit and his bride in a leopard-print jacket, with minister Kathee McFarland recalling:

“He was real quiet,” and “Patty giggled a lot.”

Besides McFarland, the only other people who attended the union were the town's former police chief and some sea otters. During her Cohen appearance, Arquette also shared:

“We hadn’t slept together for eight years till our wedding night.”

After a year of marriage, Cage felt they loved each other more than before, and this part of their marriage was known as the paper anniversary - having turned from air to paper. He hadn't noticed or felt that the romance was slipping away.

Cage told PlayBoy that he thought Arquette was romantic and thought she liked their love story, as he did. Sadly, the couple's union wouldn't last forever as they weren't destined to be life partners.

THE END OF AN ERA

As their marriage was a whirlwind one, so were their breakups. Nine months after they married, they separated and tried being a couple again for another five years before filing for divorce in 2000.

The only one he [Nicolas Cage] saw as real was the 14 years he spent with [Alice] Kim.

With no warning, they annulled the divorce and tried to reconcile their marriage. Arquette tried to explain what was going on in their marriage by revealing some secrets they hadn't addressed, saying:

“There were times when we weren’t living together because we were fighting, but it wasn’t as reported and I didn’t feel that I needed to explain that."

The actress shared how when her mother was dying from breast cancer in 1997; she moved to stay with and take care of her. She also said Cage sometimes would be away while working on a movie.

Arquette explained that she didn't feel she owed anyone an explanation about her marriage. She found it funny that when people were wrong, they put her in the position she was in and decided who she was.

By 2018, Cage already had three ex-wives under his belt, Arquette, Lisa Marie Presley, and Alice Kim. That same year, he told The Guardian that he didn't count the marriages to Arquette and Presley as valid on his record.

The only one he saw as real was the 14 years he spent with Kim. His marriage to Arquette ended in divorce in 2001, and with Kim, he had a child, son Kal-El, named after Superman's birth name.