If you�ve ever met a Star Wars zealot, you may have wondered about their fanaticism. Seth Green, however, can actually make you envy it. His consistent glee at having met film director George Lucas is palpable.

SEAN BELL

If you've ever met a Star Wars zealot, you may have wondered about their fanaticism. Seth Green, however, can actually make you envy it. His consistent glee at having met film director George Lucas - a contender as Zeus in the pantheon of geek gods - is palpable, and as infectious as the mischievous sense of fun embodied in Green's animation love letter to the space opera, Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II.

"I met him at the premiere of one of the Star Wars movies, and several times after that, but never to this degree," says Green. "It was really interesting to get to chat with him - just very basic conversations that aren't about Star Wars. Kind of like, Where'd you get that shirt?'. That's when it gets strange, when you start having super-casual conversations with George Lucas."

Robot Chicken - Green's self-created stop-motion sketch show and the most successful product of the ever-surreal Adult Swim stable of US animated television comedy - is now secure in its status as a word-of-mouth (or, in these interconnected times, word-of-internet) sleeper hit this side of the Atlantic. Its DVD collections are unpublicised top-sellers, and the show is wildly popular with the same student-age audience that made hits out of The Mighty Boosh and Flight of the Conchords.

It's also possibly the most personal project for Green, an actor, writer and director who seems that he could have played the Hollywood game far more than he has - a fact he cheerfully mocks in his recurring role as himself in the celebrity satire Entourage.

One of those actors who appears to work more or less constantly, he is probably best known for his roles as Oz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr Evil's son Scott in the Austin Powers movies, and the voice of Chris Griffin, the thick-set, thick-headed middle child in Seth MacFarlane's TV series Family Guy. Robot Chicken is an outlet for all the odd and occasionally profane impulses Green cannot express in other ventures.

Strangely, he explains, it was Hollywood production company Lucasfilm that approached Robot Chicken. "We had done a couple of Star Wars sketches which caught the attention of Lucasfilm, and they invited my co-writer Matt Seinrich and I to tour the facilities. While we were there, they approached us about developing something with them."

This led to Robot Chicken's first Star Wars episode, which acted as a dry run for this year's DVD special, which itself secured a coup in the form of Princess Leia herself, an ever-game Carrie Fisher, whose specific reason for taking part was: "If George Lucas can do it, I can do it."

"Since we were not producing it with them, but just with their permission, we weren't beholden to the same clearances or approval," says Green. This moving of the goalposts is evident in humour that ranges from dark to slapstick - from the awkward details of Anakin Skywalker's disposal' of the younglings to the perpetual fan-favourite Boba Fett, reintroduced blowing up Ewoks and whooping "I'm back from the dead, a*******!" .

"Star Wars is such an expansive universe," continues Green, "and our humour is based on defining the reality in any fantastic situation."

It cannot be ignored, least of all by the show's creators themselves, that this all happened simultaneously to another animated Star Wars parody by none other than Family Guy, Green's other main employer. Blue Harvest, an hour-long spoof of the first Star Wars film aired as the premiere to Family Guy's sixth season.

"While we were in production, Family Guy got the go-ahead," says Green.

"So me and Seth MacFarlane had this really funny moment when we just looked at each other. It seemed so impossible that two huge fans like us were allowed to run wild."

After the end of Robot Chicken's fourth season, currently airing in America, Green plans to direct his first movie, an adaptation of his "Heroes meets Animal House" Freshmen.

"I'm so in love with these kids and I know I understand how to tell their story cinematically," he says. "It's probably a year before we're casting for it, but before that I'm going to pick the brains of some of my favourite people."

George Lucas, Joss Whedon, Seth MacFarlane ... he certainly has enough good-natured megalomaniacs to garner advice from. "Ha!" he laughs. "Well, I think you have to be something of a megalomaniac to pursue this vocation."

• Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II is out now on DVD.