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Over three decades into his big screen career, Nicolas Cage remains one of the most prolific actors working in Hollywood. At least in recent years, that quantity hasn’t always guaranteed quality, but his new movie, a political drama called The Runner that hits theaters on August 7, is one of his best in a while.

Cage stars as Colin Pryce, an idealistic and ambitious Louisiana congressman who rises to prominence by leading the fight to compensate victims of the 2010 BP oil spill, and then falls from grace once his affair with a constituent is exposed to the public. What follows in the drama from first-time feature director Austin Stark is Pryce’s struggle to redeem himself as he figures out how willing he is to compromise his ideals.

The 51-year-old Oscar-winner spoke with Yahoo Movies earlier this week about the politicians and their scandals, his thoughts on Superman Lives, and more.

A story about ethically compromised politicians and sex scandals seems particularly timely now.

That’s exactly why I made the movie. I wanted to reflect something that I — from a place of neutral — see happening at an increasingly high rate of speed in our country: the decline and fall of politicians who mean well, but get derailed by personal issues that snowball in the media and become the story and eclipse any chance they have of staying in office.

Do you follow politics closely?

I mean I watch the news, I read the New York Times, and I’ll watch CNN. I like to see how things play out just from a human standpoint; being a film actor I find it interesting. Without mentioning names, I can tell when someone’s lying or isn’t lying just by having studied human behavior for a long time. But yes, it’s something that I was interested in and I wanted to find a movie that could be topical in that way. And lo and behold Austin Stark came along with this story of a fictional politician.

In New York, we’ve had Anthony Weiner, Elliot Spitzer, and others taken down by affairs. I’m amazed that some survive the scandals — the film alludes to Louisiana’s David Ritter as one of them — and some are cooked forever.

That’s true. Again, I did this from a place of neutral, but I see it even in my world. I see how someone’s personal flaws can eclipse the movies they make. Even in Film Comment, which at one time was a real gold standard of criticism, with people like Paul Schrader when he was a critic and Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, they were all about the film and the process and the performance, and, “is it a quality film or not a quality film?”

But it never got into somebody’s personal lifestyle making it’s way into the review, which is something I think has started happening on a more regular basis, ever since this cultural shift that we’ve experienced with the outlets like TMZ and gossip becoming the new gold standard. And I think a good critic will probably keep it out, but you’d be surprised at some of the places where it can turn up in somebody’s review.

I’m sure it’s sort of daunting to try to convince people you’re a different character when you have the media reporting on your love life, finances, and politics.

It’s true. It’s something that I wanted to again hold a mirror to and reflect. You know, dirty laundry sells, but I never thought it would make it into film reviews at the rate that it has. There was a clear line at one point that this is a movie that we’re reviewing based on the value of the work, not on the value of the personal life. But that line has become increasingly blurred.

Do you find that it’s showed up in reviews of your films?

I think without mentioning names — there was one review that from a pretty important periodical. I was like, “Well you’re that paper —what would my personal life have to do with the performance?” It has come across, but not very often. I have been pretty lucky to have been treated on the merit of the work whether they liked it or not, it has been mostly an honest approach from my perspective. But I have seen it once I can think of for my own work and also a few times with other people who I thought did a marvelous job, and then they were being judged on their personal lives in their film performance, which I thought was unreasonable.