Claim: Meryl Streep is a person who acts.

Adaptation -LRB- stylized as Adaptation . -RRB- is a 2002 American comedy-drama metafilm directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman . The film is based on Susan Orlean 's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief , with numerous self-referential events added . The film stars Nicolas Cage as Charlie and Donald Kaufman , and Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean , Chris Cooper as John Laroche , with Cara Seymour , Brian Cox , Tilda Swinton , Ron Livingston , and Maggie Gyllenhaal in supporting roles .   Adaptation had been in development as far back as 1994 . Jonathan Demme brought the project to Columbia Pictures with Kaufman writing the script . Kaufman experienced writer 's block and did not know what to think of The Orchid Thief . Finally he wrote a script based on his experience of adapting the book into a screenplay . Jonze signed to direct , and filming was finished in June 2001 . Though the film is billed as an adaptation of The Orchid Thief , its primary narrative focus is Charlie Kaufman 's struggle to adapt The Orchid Thief into a film , while dramatizing the events of the book in parallel . Adaptation also adds a number of fictitious elements , including Kaufman 's twin brother -LRB- also credited as a writer for the film -RRB- and a romance between Orlean and Laroche , and culminates in completely invented events including fictional versions of Orlean and Laroche three years after the events related in The Orchid Thief , Kaufman and his fictional twin brother .   Adaptation received awards at the 75th Academy Awards , 60th Golden Globe Awards and 56th British Academy Film Awards . Cooper won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor , while Kaufman won the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay . The work was ranked in a British Film Institute poll as one of the thirty best films of the 2000s .