"Would you like a cup of coffee?"

It's not the first thing Filmink expects to be asked by actor Marton Csokas, who's already branded his name into a number of high profile projects with the kind of intensity not seen since the rise of Russell Crowe. It's with the Oscar-winning bad boy that Csokas is most readily compared to - they both hail from New Zealand, both give ultimate commitment to their films and both have made a storm attack on the walls of Hollywood stardom. But it's not likely that Russell Crowe would greet you for an interview and be ready to bang you up a cup of Joe. In the flesh, Csokas (his name is Hungarian derived and is pronounced Cho-kash) looks remarkably different. On screen, he's a burly rough-edged presence. In person, he's tall and lean, and his hair is casually slicked back. Sporting a black jacket with an embroidered white shirt and black pants, Csokas is the very picture of restrained urban cool. But there's nothing forced or studied about it. He pours himself of cup of coffee - now well at home in the Columbia Tristar hospitality suite after spending an entire day there doing press interviews - and sits down for the interview, relaxed and friendly, but visibly tired after a long day of talking about himself.

"In America, for XXX, I had 45 interviews in the space of a day," Csokas says wearily on the issue of press commitments. "It's unusual, and it's interesting. I've never had that kind of experience before, and I don't know where else you would have it. But it is what is. So you've got to go along with it, and make the most of it. There's no point sitting there and being precious. There's no point being an egotist. You'd be better off just not doing it. So you go in with an open mind and an optimistic attitude, and it serves you quite well. If you answer the questions to your own disposition - lies included - then it's fun."

The junket Csokas is talking about was for XXX, the mega-budget film where he plays bad to Vin Diesel's good buy secret agent. Though a commercial, stunt-driven popcorn flick (though a very good one), Csokas still invests his character - a former Russian general turned anarchist hellraiser - with a burning, hard bitten energy that makes sure your eyes gravitate his way whenever he's on screen. It's the kind of role and performance on which careers are made or broken, and Csokas is now well and truly on the move.

This month sees the actor on screens in three films: the aforementioned Hollywood blockbuster XXX, the high profile Australian rock'n roll movie Garage Days, and the low key New Zealand coming-of-age drama Rain. It's an unintentionally well-time explosion. Prior to this, Csokas was grinding away with rock solid work in a number of slight more below-the-radar projects: the New Zealand thriller Broken English, Samantha Lang's The Monkey's Mask, the American telemovie, The Three Stooges (where he played the Stooges' manager Ted Healy) and a small role (as Cate Blanchett's husband) in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. He's also inspired some minor website devotion through several appearances on the New Zealand-shot fantasy series Xena: Warrior Princess and through his stint on the Kiwi soap Shortland Street.

"I thought about it while they were occurring," Csokas says casually of his big rollout of current films. "I thought that there might be a flurry of films. But I didn't actually think about it until the other day. I'd forgotten about that."

Obviously keenly intelligent, and completely in control when it comes to his career, Csokas is similarly reserved about the fact that a lot of eyes are going to be fixed on him with three high-profile releases in the space of one month.

The whole notion of publicity is an odd one for people in this part of the world," the actor says about the attention and media coverage that he's likely to get. "I had a little bit of experience with it, and I didn't handle it very well at all. Recently, I've been up for a couple of roles in things and I've missed them because the creative team may have wanted me but the money people haven't. They don't know who the hell I am. The finance people are like, 'who are they? How big is the film?" You know, not all the time, but a lot of the time. So rather than not do it - which is what I've done in the past because I don't necessarily think it adds anything to my work - I did publicity for XXX. In the states, it's seen as a necessary part of the process. So what are you going to do about it? So I put that hat on, and did it."