Marton Csokas, swimming with Hollywood sharks

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Marton Csokas is in no great rush. Unfortunately his career is.

While he expands on subjects tangential to the reason for this transtasman phone interview - why this former star of the Auckland stage and Shortland Street is chewing up the scenery as Yorgi, the fabulously Russian villain of the hit action flick XXX (see story below) - the clock on the movie publicity's machine ticks loudly in the background.

It's perhaps a mark of the league he's now in that Csokas is allowed only 20 minutes for the hometown media. Still, in that time we cover his thoughts on the floods in Europe (much of XXX was filmed in Prague before the devastation), Russian acting guru Stanislavsky, his casting in three of the biggest movies of recent times and his last-minute excision from one of them.

Oh, and how his attitude to acting has changed since he was treading the boards of the Maidment, appearing in the Speights ads, popping up on Xena, or playing Dr Leonard Dodds, the funniest character of his era - or since - on our deathless soap.

"I think I am taking it less seriously and with a larger sense of humour. That's been a very big lesson. I think that's the best thing. And not so much analysis - I analyse things naturally or analyse things as part of my personality, and so I've eased up on that and embraced things rather than trying to figure out how it all works - from an acting perspective this is. And I've enriched my work experience and my own life with a larger sense of humour. Those two things have been very important."

Csokas sure has been lining them up. He was in both of New Zealand's best films of last year - briefly as Celeborn, king of the elves in The Fellowship of the Ring, and as the reptilian Cady in Rain. And he was cast as the frog-faced "Poggle the Lesser" in Attack of the Clones - only by the end, Poggle became a figment of George Lucas's digital imagination.

"That was a really interesting exercise for me in terms of publicity casting and actually doing it and landing with absolutely zilch other than a credit for Star Wars and a letter from the casting director and George Lucas saying at the last moment they had decided to give him a computer-generated visage as well as voice. And it's amusing standing back and watching all that happen."

Oh well, he got to be in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Only Christopher Lee can boast the same.

"Yeah, if I can be held in such regard. Sharing a car with Dracula I felt like a 9-year-old boy."

That brings us to XXX, in which he's on screen for nearly half the movie as the leader of a drugs, sex and rock'n'roll terrorist group called Anarchy 99, made up of disenchanted former Soviet soldiers. Csokas sports a mullet and some lavish tattoos and sneers a lot in a Ruskie accent. He's terrific - a credible villain in what is otherwise an unapologetically OTT movie.

He landed the role after auditioning for director Rob Cohen who, with star Vin Diesel, were following up their hit The Fast and the Furious.

In the film's production notes Cohen says of their meeting: "At first I was a little taken aback, because although Marton was indeed tall, dark and handsome, he was also so shy and mild-mannered that I wondered if he could play a dangerous villain like Yorgi.

"When he started to read a scene from the script in character, he was suddenly seven feet tall! After Marton left the office I turned to [casting director Ronna Kress] and said, 'Let's get him. Let's not even look any further. I don't care who else is out there, this guy's amazing'."

The thought of making this most Hollywood of Hollywood films did worry Csokas.

"I didn't know what to expect with the making of the film and possibly I went in with a certain amount of trepidation. I probably expected the worst and when I was involved in it I enjoyed it thoroughly. And shooting a film in a city such as Prague - it was a blissful experience."

Csokas, who has inherited the full name of his father, who emigrated to New Zealand from Hungary after World War II, spent a month in Russia before starting filming.

"I did a Stanislavsky pilgrimage and went to the Moscow Art Theatre and saw Chekhov's The Seagull. The standard of acting was incredible and Stanislavsky made sense at last."

But Yorgi hardly required that sort of subtlety, surely?

"No, there's no point in playing him under the microscope. But at the same time I needed to bring some kind of reality to him. So that's the logic I employed. I tried not to make him too arch and to show his intentions were pure.

"There was one scene, which unfortunately was cut out of the film, that showed his private face where he was full of laughter - vodka, caviar, wine, woman and song. This kind of idea."

Disappointment at the loss of the scene is compounded somewhat because the song in question - a "filthy Russian Army song" - was taught to him by his father.

"I didn't tell him it was going to be used in the film and I was really looking forward to surprising him with it on screen. But that was not going to happen."

After the filming finished he took his father and mother to Hungary - the first time his dad had been there since migrating.

These days Csokas jnr is of no fixed abode, but with plenty of work on. He's been filming The Great Raid, a World War II POW movie in Queensland, and has been cast in Timeline, a film directed by another Hollywood action-meister, Richard Donner.

It sounds like Csokas' career is all running to plan. If there is a plan.

"It seems to be unfolding in the way that it always has. It's not a part of my philosophy, it's just what's happening. I've done lots of things along the way and now this is what is happening. Whether it was when I was washing dishes at [Auckland High St cafe] Rakinos - actually I was making pizza, too - so far as I am concerned it's on a par with that. Which might sound silly, but that is what I think. Now I am involved in this kind of experience and it's obviously more akin to acting, but it has its challenges and mostly its joys. I am enjoying it very much. I feel like I am very fortunate."

He has no regrets about his career not taking off earlier internationally - he's 36 now, but seemingly capable of adding or subtracting a decade.

"No, I am very happy that it's gone the way it's gone, and the time frame. That has crossed my mind. I probably would have been a drug-f****** mess in the corner. I did enough of that anyway."

* XXX opens on September 26.