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It’s pronounced Cho-kash (Martin), it’s Hungarian, and he’s a 39-year-old New Zealand actor who, for the past four years, has been showing up in major releases on the film festival circuit (Evilenko, Asylum) and major U.S. productions (The Bourne Supremacy, Timeline, Kingdom of Heaven, The Great Raid). His name does not exactly trip off the tongue of most film buffs; however, the spotlight is bound to shine brightly on him with his next release, a film rendition of the MTV animated series Aeon Flux, in which he takes on the part of the dark Trevor Goodchild, love interest of Chalize Theron, who plays the title role.
Marton Csokas, a classically trained actor out of the New Zealand Drama Academy, has run the gamut of roles: as a Mongol warrior, complete with flowing black hair, Fu Manchu moustache, goatee and scimitar sideburns in camp rerun classic Xena: Warrior Princess; ultra-cool, clean-shaven, raven-haired Euro-villain Yorgi in xXx; hulking and hairy medieval bad guys in both Timeline and Kingdom of Heaven; and the handsome, wife-murdering, morbidly jealous Edgar Stark in Asylum.
Inarguably, Csokas has kept his image fluid. His theatrical work includes roles in robust classics such as Twelfth Night, Angels in America and The Cherry Orchard; roles in small, critically-acclaimed films such as Rain, Hurrah, and The Three Stooges; and even a stint canoodling, nude, with a native in the gay short Twilight of the Gods.
Born in Invercargill, New Zealand, to a Hungarian father of the same name, a mechanical engineer who fled Hungary after World War II, and a Kiwi mother, a nurse, Csokas and his younger brother ping-ponged between Australia and New Zealand as his ever-restless father took jobs in several locales. The couple eventually divorced and for several years the young Marton remained estranged from his father but was infected with a never-ending wanderlust himself: After high school, he spent several months traveling around Europe, a period which he says opened his eyes to the arts. Upon returning to New Zealand, Csokas spent time at university and an arts school, eventually settling on acting as a vocation and winding up at the New Zealand Drama Academy. After hiring an agent and finding only sporadic work in drama, he eventually landed steady work by...