Nicolas Cage likes to mix it up, having recently appeared in so-so love story "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", Scorsese drama "Bringing Out the Dead" and John Woo's bloody war parable "Windtalkers". For his next trick, he returns to his quirky comedy roots with Spike Jonze's "Adaptation."...

You've been quoted as saying that you took a leaf out of the British school of acting for this film. What did you mean by that?

Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true. It just means that I tried to work from the outside in and not just from the inside out. I think a little bit of both is good.

You play twin brothers in the movie. How did you handle switching between characters?

That was kind of the challenge. I knew it would be a challenge when I signed on for the part. If you can imagine playing one character with one mindset and getting that down, then changing clothes and trying to get into the mindset of the other brother, and then switching again.

Sometimes I was literally talking to a tennis ball in place of the other brother with an earpiece, trying to remember what I said as the other twin. And at the same time I'm trying not to invade the space of the tennis ball or overlap dialogue! The transition going from Charlie to Donald Kaufman was the most difficult one, because Donald was so positive and Charlie wasn't happy with his life and who he was.

It did get really frustrating sometimes. I remember one time I literally screamed because I couldn't remember which brother I was supposed to be playing and Spike Jonze had to come in and calm me down.

Was it hard to leave the brothers behind?

I've gotten pretty good at leaving characters on the set. I go home and try to relax and regroup and be ready for the next day. I did have fun, but by the end of the shoot I was relieved.

How did they make your hair look so weird?

It's a hell of a hairdo, isn't it? It's my favorite hairdo I've ever had in a movie! It involved painting my scalp and using all sorts of things to make it look frizzy. It's kind of like a balding poodle! It's a surrealistic interpretation of Charlie Kaufman!

The film's inspired by Charlie Kaufman's real struggles with writing a screenplay. It's very unorthodox. Can you explain the concept?

Charlie Kaufman is given the job of taking the book "The Orchid Thief" and turning it into a movie. He finds it very difficult to get any sense of a story. Then he has an epiphany and decides to inject himself into the script. He's going through an incredible amount of frustration, trying to do the best job he can. That leads to the idea of putting himself in the film. He didn't tell the studio what he'd done, so when he handed in the script they were rather surprised.

Charlie is a free thinker. He's really inspiring to talk to. He doesn't really follow any particular rules or structures, and in art I really admire that. When you don't follow a certain rule, you can do something new, and I think he's done that twice now, with "Being John Malkovich" and this. It's a unique world they've put together, Charlie and Spike. I got the script and I really wanted to walk around in that world.