After bringing Gollum to life for Peter Jackson and his Lord Of The Rings, Brit actor Andy Serkis has re-teamed with the hit-making Kiwi to breathe new life into King Kong. The beast from Skull Island was a stop-motion model in the 1933 original and a man in a suit in the ropey 1976 remake. In Jackson's version, he's an astounding, photo-realistic - and very, very furry - spectacle. Serkis does wonders as the man behind the CGI facade, and this time even gets to appear as himself, doubling up as a seedy ship's cook.Below, Serkis tells you how it took more than just a bit of chest beating to turn himself into cinema's most famous gorilla, and how he became involved in a bit of inter-species flirting.

What was your preparation for your performance as Kong?

I felt quite strongly about rooting Kong's personality in real gorilla behaviour. So I spent quite a while working at London Zoo with four gorillas, and then I went to Rwanda and observed gorillas in the wild. What really stuck out was how individual they all were, and we're 97 per cent genetically similar, so there isn't as great a void between us and them. I mean there's generic gorilla behaviour, which is something that I spent a long time trying to build up, and then there was the personality and the characterisation. We all had our own different opinions, which became this melting pot, and eventually we came up with who Kong is.

Was there anything that was difficult to achieve through the performance?

The biggest challenge for the whole job was deciding how much we anthropomorphised Kong and how much we kept him as a real gorilla. Once Naomi and I had played the scenes out, and emotionally crafted the journey of their relationship, I then got the chance to go on to the motion-capture stage with the writers, Philippa [Boyens] and Fran [Walsh]. It was great, actually, having the writing process continue, because then we could play with how human he was and how gorilla he was. Every single scene we'd play across a spectrum, a number of different ways, and Peter would choose what he thought was dramatically appropriate.

While you were observing the gorillas, I understand one of them actually fell in love with you. Is that a first for you?

I didn't think this was going to be exposed. But seeing as we're talking about it, it's heartbreaking. It's ended and it's tragic. But there you go. She's called Zaire and I actually went back to see her about six days ago. We did form quite a strong relationship. It is no joke. I spent about two-and-a-half months there and, well, she chose me really. She picked me out and was very affectionate towards me.

In what way was she affectionate towards you?

We'd play games with each other, we started texting. . . No, really, she used to throw things through the cage and then I'd throw them back. I said to my wife, "You've got to come see Zaire, because she's amazing," and lo and behold, when I came down one day with my wife, she came bounding up, all doey eyed and gentle. But then when Lorraine came round, she had this big water bottle full of mineral tea, and she turned it round and [performs crushing action] went like that, and squirted water all over Lorraine. She was like, "What's going on here? I've walked in on something." She read the signs and fled. Anyway, I went back and Zaire came up to me, and she was like, "Where have you been? Why the f*** haven't you written?"

King Kong is released in UK cinemas on Thursday 15th December 2005.