Nicolas Cage Files for Annulment Four Days After Marriage, Report Says

Actor Nicolas Cage attends the "Joe" screening hosted by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions with The Cinema Society at Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York City, on April 9, 2014. (Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)

Actor Nicolas Cage reportedly filed for an annulment just four days after he got married in Las Vegas.

According to Entertainment Tonight, he filed the annulment from his wife, Erika Koike, on March 27.

Cage, 55, has also requested a divorce if an annulment isn’t possible, the report said, citing court documents.

On March 23, the couple applied for a marriage license and got married in Las Vegas, it was reported.

The “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Face/Off” star hasn’t issued a public statement about the matter.

TMZ, citing his court documents, reported that Cage said, “[Erika] suggested to [Nic] that they should marry, [Nic] reacted on impulse and without the ability to recognize or understand the full impact of his actions.”

Cage said the marriage was a fraud because she didn’t disclose “the full nature and extent of her relationship with another person,” adding that she also did not disclose her criminal history.

He said the annulment is justified because both had “such conflict in personalities and dispositions that are so deep as to render the two incompatible in marriage.”

His marriage to Koike is his fourth.

Cage was previously married to Patricia Arquette from 1995 to 2001. After that, he was married to Lisa Marie Presley, People magazine reported, adding that they got divorced three months after a secret Hawaii marriage.

Cage married Alice Kim, a waitress who worked at a restaurant, in 2004.

Legal experts say that an annulment is different from a divorce.

“There are two ways to legally end a marriage—annulment and divorce,” says Legalzoom.com. “An annulment is a legal procedure which cancels a marriage between a man and a woman. Annulling a marriage is as though it is completely erased - legally, it declares that the marriage never technically existed and was never valid.”

The website adds: “An annulment case can be initiated by either the husband or the wife in the marriage. The party initiating the annulment must prove that he or she has the grounds to do so and if it can be proven, the marriage will be considered null and void by the court.”

Some reasons include bigamy, forced consent, fraud, mental illness, mental incapacity, underage marriage, or an inability to consummate the marriage.

“For some people, getting divorced carries a negative connotation. Since annulment makes it so that the marriage never happened, this may be preferable for people who wish to remarry in their church, or for other personal or religious reasons,” says Legalmatch.com.

It adds that there is generally no time constraints on getting an annulment. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to get one as time progresses.

“Additionally, annulments are best suited for short marriages (usually weeks or months) because those unions generally do not involve joint assets to divide or children,” says the website.

The concept of an annulment is also found within the Catholic Church.

“Rather, a Church tribunal (a Catholic Church court) declares that a marriage thought to be valid according to Church law actually fell short of at least one of the essential elements required for a binding union,” according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.