Owen Wilson's other films include Zoolander and Starsky and Hutch

In a letter posted on their website, rockers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had claimed the film was inspired by their 2001 track, Cousin Dupree.

In a statement seen by the Associated Press agency, however, the Wedding Crashers star played down any link.

"I have never heard the song Cousin Dupree and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr Steely Dan, is," he said.

"I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, Hey 19" - the title of a 1980 Steely Dan hit.

'Heavy artists'

In You, Me and Dupree, Wilson plays an amiable slacker who comes to stay with his best friend and his new wife and proves impossible to evict.

Becker and Fagan claimed the character was inspired by their own Cousin Dupree, a travelling musician who "comes back home to plan [his] next move from the comfort of [his] Aunt Faye's couch".

"When it came time to change the character's name so people wouldn't know what a rip the whole thing was, they didn't even bother to think up a new name for the guy," they complained last week.

Wilson, they added, would "go down hard" for "trashing the work of some pretty heavy artists like us".