PASADENA, Calif. — Actor Peter Mensah is an imposing presence. Nearly 6-foot-4, erect, with skin the color of burnished leather and a body like a Greek sculpture, you can see why he was cast as the supreme gladiator in the “Spartacus” cycle.

Having finished the first season, Starz is airing the prequel, “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena,” in which Mensah plays Oenomaus.

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 said.

“So I tend to focus more on just being believable, traveling 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 or 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 emphasized 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 dad is an engineer; his mother, a writer who now runs a school in Ghana.

“The other thing, I was also an athlete,” he said. “I was a very busy child. There was always one thing or another after school and some event on the weekends.

“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. Mensah admits it takes daring to be an actor. “Because the job requires 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 said.

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 realize if you keep doing it this way, what’s going to happen.

“I also recognize 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 added, “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’

When: 10 p.m. Fridays

Where: Starz