HOLLYWOOD - It may not be happenstance that Nicolas Cage is attracted to characters typically on the 'outside' looking in--the punk rocker from the other side of the tracks in Valley Girl, the lovelorn other brother in Moonstruck, and the agoraphobic con artist in Matchstick Men--he has edge.

While the quintessential movie star, no one can
accuse him of being conventional--Cage sums up his choices in roles saying, "I think the best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time."

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Nicolas Cage and his new film Bangkok Dangerous: 8 Reasons Why Being On the Outside is Never Boring

#1) You may find yourself in the middle of a military coup… “I was on the set [Bangkok Dangerous] around one in the morning, firing an automatic weapon, when the gun wrangler said, ‘You've got to stop shooting. There's a military coup about to happen.’ I didn't even know what that meant. When was the last time we had a military coup in the U.S.? I gave myself 50/50 [chance-wise], I really didn’t know what could happen.”

#2 Being on the edge of the world will take you global… “What happened was, I was thinking more about being global in my work which means going to foreign countries and working with foreign filmmakers and hoping that they’d give me a new point of view and keep it fresh and reinvent me in a way. That’s largely why I made the movie.”

#3) Get acquainted with royalty..."I’ve never been in an active monarchy before and it was an example of one that works--the people there [Thailand] love their king. It makes you feel totally safe because if you wear the king’s insignia on your shirt, you are invincible, because no one would dare do anything to that person because they wear the king’s symbol.”

#4) There is no pressure to live up to others' expectations..“I really didn’t factor in the original film at all because it’s the story of a white guy in the middle of an Asian culture--that automatically gives the movie an inherent dramatic tension that you find when you see pictures dealing with different races and different cultures interacting.”

#5) You don’t have to worry about being liked… “I think the best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time. You are in the center of the universe and can speak to everybody if you can find characters that are more ambiguous and create more questions.”

#6) Being a loner makes everything new… "I have my own feelings of enchantment and bewilderment being married to a Korean woman. I didn’t know how to fit into her culture and there were feelings of wanting to do the right thing but there was the fear of making a mistake. Those feelings [I've had] of isolation connected with Joe in Bangkok Dangerous."

#7) You’re never too far out of reach that you’re untouched by others who cross your path… "Going to Thailand and working with an all Thai crew and having the opportunity to live in that beautiful country for a couple of months--I was amazed and enchanted, really, by the amount of time Thai people take to bless one another and respect one another."

#8) If you get tired of being on the outside…become someone else! “I’ve learned that one of the tools an actor has is to use hair and make up to try and transform yourself, so you can lose yourself in the character. It does help with believing you do become somebody else. There’s always an aspect of disguise that I like about filmmaking.”