When American Pie became a smash hit around the world Jason Biggs expressed his fears, half jokingly, that he would forever be known as "the pie guy". But he has shown variety in films that include Saving Silverman, Jersey Girl, Prozac Nation and Woody Allen's Anything Else, while remaining loyal to the American Pie films by appearing in two sequels. In the satirical Guy X he plays Rudy Spruance, a victim of unbending military bureaucracy who finds himself deposited at a remote army base in Greenland rather than the Hawaiian posting he was expecting.

Audiences who know you from American Pie might be surprised to see a more mature performance in Guy X. Was it easy to tackle comedy of a very different sort here?

The challenge for me, in terms of my performance, was not going too broad. I'm used to really going for the joke, but I couldn't do that here. I had to be disciplined about keeping the performance subtle and that's what I loved about the script.

What would you say the main differences were between this and those other comedies?

I come from the theatre world, so I'm used to performing for the last row, and in a lot of the film work that I've done I was still able to play things up a bit because the role required it of me. Here I had to be reined in a little bit. The director, Saul Metzstein, reminded me that the camera would pick up all that stuff, even those minor adjustments you make. I tend to forget that when I'm performing on stage, or having sex with a pie...

You're obviously comfortable with still being associated with your best known movie then.

Sure, I guess the commercial success of those films means there's something I bring to the table in terms of marketability for smaller independent jobs. As far as I'm concerned everybody wins because people in the independent world are interested in me because of that and I'm interested in doing something different.

Guy X was a British-Icelandic co-production, and the cast was largely made up of Canadians and Brits. Were you the American conscience of the story here?

Up to a point. I was a bit of a sounding board, but then again I probably know as much if not less about that era in the late 70s, and the American military in general, as the British people involved. And in lots of ways it's not a particularly American film anyway, it's a great story about people who could be from anywhere.

As this film shows movie audiences a different side to you are you hoping it might lead to new opportunities?

I'm not going to argue if different things are offered to me as a result of this. That would be incredibly flattering, and exciting, but I try not to get my hopes up. I just try to take each project as it comes. I'm proud of the work I've done in this film, I'm proud of the film as a whole but most of all I'm happy with the experience I had making it. That's the only thing in my control, the experience that I had and my own performance in it. What happens as a result is out of my hands.

Guy X is released in UK cinemas on Friday 14th October 2005.