A casting short-order form might have described him thus: imposing, darkly intense, carries off convincing outbursts of violent rage, looks good with oiled torso.

But Csokas, who launched his career playing the strapping lover of the heroine of Xena: Warrior Princess, reveals he has recently turned down similar Brutus-style roles. He's wary of being typecast.

"I'm six foot one [1.85 metres]; I've got a certain physicality," he says with a shrug, "but I've stopped taking those roles now."

He is relishing the opportunity to play the harangued, ineffectual George in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, which opens at Belvoir St Theatre on Wednesday night.

The classic black comedy explores the toxic relationship between George and Martha, and was made famous by the 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. "Martha is the aggressor," Csokas says. "George has to weave and duck, and also land a few punches of his own, as opposed to playing the slugger."

Aside from his height, it's difficult to see how Csokas has found himself playing the "slugger" in so many action roles. In person he is quietly spoken, with the kind of ambiguous trans-Atlantic accent that actors often have. His hazel eyes betray a sensitivity and his hair, often dark and slicked back in films, has a reddish tinge, which softens his appearance even more.

Csokas, 41, was born in New Zealand to a Hungarian father and a mother of Anglo-Irish descent. The family moved to Sydney and lived in Lidcombe until returning to New Zealand when Csokas was 10. He has fond memories of that time, living in an intensely multicultural pocket where kids played together and were fed by everyone's mothers.

"We had Croatians to our right, Turks to the left and Russians across the street, as well as Greeks, Lebanese - you name it," he says. "I reflect on it now and realise how privileged I was. I appreciate it more and more as the years go by."

The young Csokas loved to read but spent much of his youth staring at the black line at the bottom of the local swimming pool, competing at state and national level and winning a NSW freestyle title. He was also involved in surf lifesaving, his parents ferrying him to beaches all over Sydney to compete.

Csokas left school with no idea what he wanted to do, and travelled for a while. It wasn't until he was studying arts at university in New Zealand that he fell in love with theatre and acting.

His career has had a slow and steady trajectory, from roles in beer commercials and the New Zealand soapie Shortland Street to starting a theatre company in Australia and getting roles in films such as Broken English, The Monkey's Mask, Rain and The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, before capturing the attention of Hollywood directors.

In fact, Csokas is having the sort of dream career that serious actors would have found almost impossible to imagine a few decades ago. Like Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, he is capable of flitting over to Hollywood to star in a blockbuster, then returning to Australia to do an art house film such as Romulus, My Father, and signing up for a theatre season in Sydney.

"It's great to be able to have the variety," he says. "I wouldn't want to miss out on theatre. The same with film; I need a balance."

He appreciates the rich pickings that Hollywood has to offer, but is not scared to to do his own thing. Agents tried to convince him to change his surname (pronounced Chokash), and although he toyed with the idea, he decided not to.

Although he is in a relationship with French actor and Bond girl Eva Green, whom he met on the set of Kingdom Of Heaven, he manages to dodge the paparazzi's radar.

You'll never see him out to dinner with Posh and Becks. In fact, Csokas refuses to acknowledge his relationship with Green at all, apart from an oblique reference to spending "a lot of time in Paris".

"Otherwise it [the relationship] starts landing in a lot of other places," he says, referring to the pages of celebrity magazines. "It's nice to avoid all that."

Csokas is known by the media as a "difficult interview", but only when questions nip too closely at the boundaries of his private world do his arms fold and his body turn away momentarily. Coaxed back to safer ground, he relaxes and reveals himself to be erudite, thoughtful and politically aware.

He has marched against the Iraq war, which he calls "obscene", belongs to Amnesty International, and is a supporter of community radio stations such as Democracy.org in Los Angeles, his part-time home.

He dislikes what he calls superficial news and commercials, reads poetry and Eastern philosophy and enjoys getting stuck into a good novel, one of the most recent being Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

For now, Csokas is happy to once more enjoy the camaraderie of being in a theatre production and the intensity of performing to an audience. Theatre, he says, "blows the cobwebs out" and offers the chance to immerse himself in material of great depth.

"The continuity of rehearsing and then being on stage for a number of weeks - it's quite a pure experience," he says. He often leaves rehearsals drained of energy, and winds down by cycling, running, yoga or listening to music. "It's a big monster of a play," he says.

Csokas is looking forward to a day where he can put down roots and start a family.

"I'm drifting, but that will change. Relationships can be difficult when you are transient. At some point I will probably put a flag down." But where? There's his birth country of New Zealand; then there is Sydney, which he "loves"; London where he has a home, and Los Angeles where he often works. And then there's Paris.

"We'll see," he says with an enigmatic half-smile, careful not to give too much away.