Oscar winner Nicolas Cage is an actor who thrives on risk taking. He won an Oscar for his realistic portrayal of a self-destructive alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas", and has starred in a plethora of big Hollywood films such as "The Rock", "Con Air", "National Treasure" and "Ghost Rider", while at the same time pushing himself in smaller films as diverse as "Sonny", "Adaptation" and "The Weather Man".

Adding to the latter list of the small and eclectic is Werner Herzog’s "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans", which had its world premiere at the recent Toronto Film Festival. Loosely based on the original "Bad Lieutenant" that starred Harvey Keitel, Cage steps into the role of cop Terence McDonagh, a now drug-addicted detective in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In this very exclusive interview with us, Cage talked about the challenges of doing this film as well as his own ambitions as an actor three decades after his career took off as an 18-year old actor in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

On the page, was the character in Bad Lieutenant somewhat different than the way that you decided to play him? It seems to me that you gave, really, your own stamp on this guy. "I had an idea of where I wanted to go and I really felt that you could go into a dimension that was more abstract, because of the drugs he was on, so that I could go outside of the box, and hit more extreme levels, which is a pretty fun thing to do, when you have carte blanche to do it, because he was on crack and he was on coke and he was on heroin. So it allowed me to get a more extreme kind of performance, which I find quite amusing."

I understand there was quite a lot of improv on your part, on this. How much were you able to get away with? "Well, the scene in the retirement home, some of those lines I wrote when I was in Australia working on another movie, but a lot of the stuff was improvised on the set, like the scenes in the drug den, or in the car, when I was with all the gangsters. All that stuff sort of just came out."

Is there something more freeing for you as an actor, to do something like this, as opposed to any of the more mainstream Hollywood films that you do, almost kind of a counterbalance to this kind of character? "Yeah – I mean, whenever I make a movie, whether it’s a big adventure film, or a more independently-spirited, midnight kind of movie, I think they inform each other, in that I’m always going to try to find something new I can do with a character, even if it’s trying to fit within a formula, or if it has no formula. And then I can learn from the independent movies, apply and sort of cherry pick what I liked from those movies, and put them into the more mainstream movies."

What was it about this particular project that appealed to you from the outset? Was Herzog’s involvement almost paramount for you to be a part of this film? "Well, I was fascinated with the idea of working with Werner. I mean, I’d grown up watching his movies, and so I had an interest in him, but I think it was the audacity of the project that compelled me. I liked the idea of doing something this outside the box, and this extreme with Werner. I mean, no one would really think to do a remake of Bad Lieutenant, so that alone was reason enough to do it."

Do you see this as simply being a remake of Bad Lieutenant? Because the two films are very disconnected from each other, it seems to me. "Yeah, that’s true. I meant in the beginning, when they first talked to me about it. It was like, “Well -- the title Bad Lieutenant, and Werner’s going to do it.” But to me, it was clear that there was a different direction we could go in. And the movies stand apart, and they’re both originals but for different reasons. To me, the Abel Ferrara movie is much more of kind of a religious program, where Harvey’s character’s going through all sorts of Catholic guilt. Whereas with this one is he gets existential, and there is no guilt."

Do you see any redemptive qualities in this character? "I mean, if there are, that’s for you to find."