Actor Peter Mensah is an imposing presence, nearly 1.93m, erect, with skin the colour of burnished leather and a body like a Greek sculpture. You can see why he was cast as supreme gladiator Doctore/Oenomaus in Spartacus and its prequel Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.
Though an athlete most of his life, Mensah doesn't think about his physicality when it comes to acting.
"The process is kind of about playing a person going through experiences, and all sorts of people - no matter what their physical presence or being - will go through all sorts of situations," he says, seated at a dining room table in hotel.
"So I tend to focus more on just being believable, travelling through the journey in front of me, whether I'm physically what you'd expect or not doesn't matter to my mind. And when I do that, it appears to at least allow whoever is trying to create the piece to decide whether on not this is an interesting take on the character ... regardless of the exterior, my job is to bring to life this person."
Like his character, there's a whole lot more to Mensah than meets the eye. Born to Ghanaian parents, he grew up in England where his parents emphasised academics, he says.
"I was fine to do anything as long as I got good grades. So I guess what that did, it meant I had to study in order to get the pass to act. So it worked out in the long run."
His father is an engineer, his mother a writer who now runs a school in Ghana.
"The other thing, I was also an athlete," he says, cupping his chin in his hand. "I was a very busy child. There was always one thing or another after school and some event on the weekends. So I think they were just grateful that these were things within reach, that I didn't develop a liking for parachuting that they'd have to worry about."
He did judo, track and field, the long jump, the triple jump and the 400m and 800m.
"We've had conversations today about how physical the show is and the role is. It's all of those things. But the thing I find that's really interesting to me as an actor, as opposed to an athlete doing this, is that it's a very touching human story and the character carries the weight of so much suffering with him.
"And that's what I find really interesting to work with. He's training men in the art of killing in an environment where human life - especially a slave's life - is given away so easily. So in order to do that and have some heart has been a great challenge. I've loved it."
The man who appeared in Avatar, The Incredible Hulk and Hidalgo cut the cord from Mother England eight years ago and headed for Hollywood.
"It was a combination of friends in the industry that I'd been working with. They said you should just come and join in, a good friend of mine, Annabeth Gish, who was here at the time.
"And a couple of years later I said, 'I can't do this. I'm going home'.
"And her and her husband counselled, 'Just stay. You've got something here. When people see you, they'll understand'. Of course, you go through the natural frustration of you work a little bit, and then you don't. I thought, 'Wow, what am I doing?'
"You want to be happy, no matter what. And I didn't like the range because in Hollywood - unlike anywhere else - the highs and lows were just tremendous. But then over the course of time, I've developed a great group of friends and there's an understanding of the process."
Mensah admits it takes daring to be an actor.
"Because the job requires that I put myself out there and just lay it open. It is a courageous thing to do for a living because you are emotionally bare at times; even this character requires me to be really disciplined personally and emotionally. Am I disciplined?
"I can be disciplined. Am I always? No," he laughs.
Unmarried, he says he and his girlfriend split up because he was never home.
"Career-wise, that's good, but it's also revealing, because these are the things that reveal what you care about, and so it definitely starts to weigh when you realise if you keep doing it this way, what's going to happen.
"I also recognise the blessing of having this enormous task and job and world-life experience. It's sort of a continuation of the things I mentioned - travel. I pretty much had the opportunity to travel to the end of the Earth doing my craft."
Mensah has not forgotten his roots in Ghana.
"We built a school 13 years ago now. It's a credit to my mother and my sister, who teaches there as well, because we started with three kids and now we have over 700 children, and it's such a credit to the amount of effort they put in.
"It's also a great reference for me," he adds, "because this is an industry in which we can forget about the rest of the world. I get to, every week, go through with my family what we need, the issues, listen to the stories of the kids and it certainly brings things into balance."
- Spartacus: Gods of the Arena screens Sundays at 9.30pm on Box.