THE amicable Greg Kinnear usually likes working with other actors - but in his new comedy Stuck On You he found Matt Damon was just too close for comfort.

The movie is a typically outlandish comedy by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, creators of There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hal.

In Shallow Hal, the co-writing and directing brothers managed to force Gwyneth Paltrow into a fat suit. Now in Stuck On You, Kinnear and Damon have to fit into a rubber body suit and are harnessed together, to play a pair of conjoined twins.

More toned down than the Farrelly Brothers' previous films, it still tests the boundaries of taste when the conjoined brothers go to Hollywood because one wants to pursue an acting career. Watch out too for Cher spoofing herself as a diva monster.

Kinnear plays Walt, and it was fortunate that he and Damon got on so well because it was a pretty tight fit in the special harness.

"We're essentially wearing a full rubber body suit that went on in pieces," he explains. "It was about a 25 minute process to get this on and off, so we kind of lived in this horrific contraption for about 12 hours a day."

Then there were the days they had to put on extra prosthetics so the pair could don swimsuits to lap up the Southern Californian rays.

"We were strapped in there pretty tight, but it worked to our benefit. Some of the comic business resulted from us just trying to adapt to the harness."

At the outset, both Kinnear and Damon were worried about how they would get along working so closely to one other.

"About two weeks in, we both turned to each other and admitted that we were really sweating it going in," admits Damon. "If the other guy was a jerk we would have been screwed big time. Fortunately I really liked Greg and his sense of humour."

Working with the movements of each other became like a dance, says Kinnear. "We became better with time. Then we reached that magical point where we didn't have to announce our intentions to each other."

Getting the unusually close physical tone of the relationship right was important, adds the actor.

"They're brothers who have spent every single moment with one another. That changes the dynamic of the relationship quite a bit."

Kinnear admits he had his reservations about doing Stuck On You. "I thought it could be tasteless if it made fun of conjoined twins. Whether the idea was actually suitable for a movie, I wasn't sure.

"But when I read the script, I realised the Farrelly Brothers had a great love for these characters. There's not a cynical moment in the movie."

However, he hadn't bargained for working so closely with Damon, he adds. "The physical stuff was a lot more prominent than I thought it would be, tied snugly to another person, only responsible for 50 per cent of your movement."

Kinnear has taken an unlikely route to Hollywood film stardom. The once wise-cracking entertainment show host got his first acting bre ak when Tom Cruise dropped out of Sidney Pollack's remake of Sabrina in 1995.

"It happened so quickly I was stupid enough not to ask myself the real smart questions and I just dived headfirst into the waterless pool," he laughs.

Nevertheless, Kinnear has managed to carve out a respectable acting career by being unthreatening and appealing in films like As Good As It Gets and Nurse Betty.

In his darkest performance to date, he managed to get under the sleazy skin of the late Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane in the biopic Auto Focus.

Stuck On You shows Kinnear is keen to test the waters of more varied comedy. "I've tried consciously to do as varied material as I can. I've certainly gotten to do a lot of what I hoped I'd get to do."

Now Kinnear is knocking on the door of the Hollywood A-list. He has also just become a father for the first time, with a daughter born four months ago (he's married to actress Helen Labdon), so life is looking pretty good for the Virginia-born son of an American diplomat.