NICOLAS CAGE INTERVIEW: 'SOME PEOPLE THINK I'M NUTS!'

Nicolas Cage is either as mad as a box of badgers or one of the greatest talents of our times, very possibly both. He
has a unique way of talking, along with a highly individual acting style, which divides audiences and critics.

At the age of 46, he is suffering major financial problems and, with a need to pull in big bucks, has a string of movies on the way.

Over the past 25 years or so, he has become king of the unconventional performance, stretching back to bizarre early movies like Peggy Sue Got Married and Wild At Heart right up to his latest loopy roles as a twisted crimefighter in Kick-Ass and a drug-addled detective in the upcoming Bad Lieutenant.

All of my characters have a glint of madness, he says. Some people think Im nuts too but Im just interested in exploring new ways of acting.

Its been an uphill battle making some directors understand that but theres a core group of the audience who got it from the start.

Years ago I met Miles Davis on a chat show, we talked about art, acting and music and he accepted my philosophy. Miles became a surrealist father of sorts and ever since then Ive approached acting as jazz.

Sometimes I play whatever comes out of me, like in Bad Lieutenant, and other times it is carefully thought out, as with Adaptation, but I like to mix it up rather than always playing the same songs.

I feel most alive when I do something that pushes me out of my comfort zone, like Kick-Ass, where the scene where Im shooting a 12-year-old girl was a big challenge for me.

Nicolas, who changed his surname from Coppola to Cage in tribute to Marvel superhero Luke Cage and named his youngest son Kal-El after Supermans name, was drawn to Kick-Ass because it was based on a comic book.

Ive always had a soft spot for comic books. I learned to read from them. The words in them were so interesting. The stories are modern myths, which give people power. There are cops who wear Batman T-shirts underneath their uniforms and paramedics who wear Superman shirts under their clothes because thats what gives them the guts to go in and get the job done.

It was somewhat the same for Big Daddy, my character in Kick-Ass. I made him speak like Adam West in the old Batman TV series because that voice gave him the guts to fight crime.

I also based him on the cop father of a girl I dated years ago. Her father had that moustache a lot of cops wear and always called his daughter child, which I thought was a bit strange.

Then he suddenly clams up before revealing too much more, saying: If I tell you what I was thinking in each performance, it loses the mystery and the audience lose their secret connection with my work.

Yet many fans will also be wondering what he was thinking to get in such deep financial trouble just a year after being ranked as Hollywoods fifth highest-paid actor.

According to unconfirmed reports, Cage has spent more than £1million on comic books and also spent lavishly on a dinosaur skull, shrunken heads, four yachts, an island, a private jet and more than 50 cars.

American tax authorities recently issued a claim against him for millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, while his various
houses around the world have been sold off or are in foreclosure. He has filed a lawsuit against Samuel Levin, his former business manager, blaming him for failing to pay the taxes and making unsound investments, which led down a path to financial ruin.

Levin has countersued, describing Cage as setting off on a spending spree of epic proportions.

Cages main residence, a mock Tudor mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles whose former owners include Dean Martin and Sir Tom Jones, has struggled to sell even at a knockdown price.

After touring the house, estate agent Bret Parsons blamed the bordello-like design style and described the place as bizarre.

Despite all these problems, Cage could be just one blockbuster hit away from solving his financial woes so its lucky for him he has likely smash The Sorcerors Apprentice coming out this summer.

The first footage from the film, in which he plays a wizard, looked spectacular when unveiled to cheering crowds at the WonderCon pop culture festival in San Francisco earlier last month.

The Disney movie features more than 1,000 special effects and is based on the Mickey Mouse sequence in Fantasia, which is Cages favourite film and one that he watches every year.

He explains it was his idea to adapt it into a starring vehicle for himself, saying: I wanted to play a magician because when you play a supernatural character the possibilities are limitless. We now have the technology to make the wonderful things from Fantasia come to life; like the broom sequence, thats in our movie.

We can give it all the panache and big entertainment style it needs and no ones better at that than my good friend Jerry Bruckheimer who is producing the movie, which is the seventh film we have worked on together.

Those previous collaborations include action hits like Con Air, The Rock and Gone In Sixty Seconds but this one is very much a family film: An important audience according to three-times married Cage.

He has two sons, 19-year-old Weston with ex-girlfriend Christina Fulton and four-year-old Kal-El with his current spouse, former waitress Alice Kim, 25.

Cage, who was previously married to Lisa Marie Presley and actress Patricia Arquette, says: Its funny, my wife told me she once sneaked into my 1997 film Face/Off because she was too young to get in to see it but The Sorcerors Apprentice is a film that parents can go to with their children and enjoy equally. I think its important for families to share experiences like that.

Having been a father for 19 years I realise fatherhood has changed me. After having a child I went in another direction.

Im not an anarchist any more. I still love the Sex Pistols but I dont want to be a punk rocker all the time but I do want to carry on exploring new forms of acting.

That is something he is certainly doing on the film he is currently shooting, Drive Angry. It is the first movie Cage has shot in 3D and he can barely contain his enthusiasm. He grins mischievously and says: Im trying to mess with the format. Im sticking my tongue out in scenes to try to make that work in 3D. Im thinking Ill try to get my tongue all the way out to the second row of the audience.

Bad Lieutenant is released on May 21.