Marton Csokas, or, to be more accurate, Csókás Márton, was born on New Zealand, from an English mother and a Hungarian father. Up till the age of 13, he wrote his name in English fashion, despite having Hungarian citizenship. According to him, he realized at the age of 13 how important his roots are for him; since then, he usually even uses the accents while writing his name.

He's sure that it's important to know where one has come from and to hand down the origianal family name. Besides, he says, he now writes his name in Hungarian fashion "so that others won't have it too easy".

Csókás Márton has been an actor for 15 years. During this time, he has played an impressive number of TV and movie roles, but also participated in theatre productions. Most recently, we could see him in two "mass movies": he played the Elf-Lord Celeborn in "The Lord of the Rings" and Guy de Lusignan in "The Kingdom of Heaven".

According to him working with both Peter Jackson and Ridley Scott was a great experience, although the two directors are very different personalities. In his opinion, for Peter Jackson a harmonic working relationship and personal attachment are the most important things, Scott is a much more authoritive personality and prefers a very detailled performance.

The Alba Regia Festival was supposed to show the movie "Asylum" -- unfortunately, the distributors haven't managed to hand out the copy on time. Csókás plays a mentally ill artist in this movie. He prepared himself for the role not only by reading medical literature and biographies but also by spending a considerable amount of time in a psychiatric clinic. He says that for him it's most important to play a role with the greatest possible indentification with the character.

At the question whether he'd be willing to participate in a Hungarian production, he said that, naturally, he would. He's a great admirer of Szabó István and Tar Béla, and he's amazed what a great influence a Hungarian director (Tar Béla) had on such well-known directors ad Gus Van Sant, for example."