Liam McIntyre hopes he can live up to ‘Spartacus’ legacy

• Reprints

In this image released by Starz, Liam McIntyre portrays the title role in a scene from "Spartacus: Vengeance," premiering Friday, Jan 27, 2012 at 10pm EST on Starz. (AP Photo/Starz Entertainment)

Updated: March 4, 2012 8:07AM

PASADENA, Calif. — Liam McIntyre couldn’t believe what he just saw.

He stared and thought to himself: “Oh, my gosh. I can’t make sense of this.”

Driving into town from Hollywood, he took a quick glance out his car window and saw a picture of himself, dressed as a gladiator, in an advertisement for “Spartacus: Vengeance.” The image took him aback.

“It’s the weirdest feeling to see it,” he says with a laugh during an interview. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.”

The series about the legendary Roman slave-turned-rebel leader recently began its second season (9 p.m. Fridays on Starz).

Until he got “Spartacus: Vengeance,” McIntyre was an up-and-coming star on Australian television, doing a few soap operas and such. He had a small role in HBO’s “The Pacific,” but he’s sure he was edited out. Nothing he has done previously could prepare him for the media attention coming his way in the popular series.

For this clean-cut actor (“I’ve never even had a drink before”), playing Spartacus puts him into a whole new arena.

“I feel like I have the opportunity now to play something a kid would love to do, to just pick up a stick and start swinging it around and play hero,” says the 29-year-old, who has a girlfriend but no children.

Going into “Spartacus: Vengeance,” he was scrawny — more than 45 pounds underweight from a previous film role. He was virtually untrained as a fighter and was assuming the role made popular by Andy Whitfield, who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011.

The two never met in person, but did communicate once online.

“I got an email correspondence from Andy while he was sick. He was going through the worst possible (fight) anyone could go through,” McIntyre says, “and there he was writing to me saying, ‘Bravo. Well done. Now here’s what you need to do (for the role)’ ... I hope I have enough in me that if I were in that situation I’d do the same thing for someone.”

Scripps Howard
News Service