Nicolas Cage arrives at Sydney Airport with baby daughter and wife, Riko Shibata

A smiling Nicolas Cage has flown into Sydney with his young family ahead of production getting underway on his new psychological thriller.

Nicolas Cage has landed in Australia ahead of production on his latest movie.

The National Treasure star, 59, is set to appear in The Surfer, which will begin filming in the Margaret River in the coming weeks.

Cage was joined by his 28-year-old wife, Riko Shibata, and his one-year-old daughter August, as he made his way through Sydney Airport over the weekend.

Cage and his family have landed in Sydney. Picture: Media Mode

Production will soon get underway on his new thriller in WA. Picture: Media Mode

August is his first child with Shibata, who is his fifth wife. The actor also has two sons from previous marriages.

Cage held his one-year-old daughter as he walked through the airport. Picture: Media Mode

The family will soon head to Western Australia as production gets underway on The Surfer, a psychological thriller from director Lorcan Finnegan, which sees a man (Cage) return to his beachside hometown in Australia, years after moving to the US.

However, after he is humiliated in front of his teenage by a local gang of surfers who claim ownership over his local beach, a territorial war breaks out where the stakes soon escalate out of control.

Cage will next star in The Surfer. Picture: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

Cage’s latest role comes just months after he revealed the reason he’d starred in so many box office bombs.

The one-time Oscar winner admitted in an interview with US 60 Minutes in April that he’d had to take on a series of “crummy” jobs to pay off a multimillion-dollar debt.

“I was over-invested in real estate,” Cage said. “It wasn’t because I spent $80 on an octopus. The real estate market crashed, and I couldn’t get out in time. I paid them all back but it was about $6 million.”

He explained it was a “dark time” in his life, but that he’d successfully avoided having to file for bankruptcy.

“No doubt work was always my guardian angel. It may not have been blue chip, but it was still work,” he added.

“Even if the movie ultimately is crummy, they know I’m not phoning it in, that I care every time.

“But there are those folks who think the only good acting I can do [is] the acting I chose to do by design, which was more operatic and larger-than-life, the so-called ‘Cage Rage’. You’re not going to get that all the time.”

Originally published as Nicolas Cage arrives at Sydney Airport with baby daughter and wife, Riko Shibata