There is a certain kind of actor who walks into a room and immediately changes the temperature. Not because they are loud. Not because they demand attention. But because something quietly recalibrates. Conversations soften. Posture shifts. People listen. Aleks Paunovic has built an entire career out of that exact moment.

If Paunovic’s resume suggests danger, authority, or mythic weight, the reality is that much of his work comes from restraint rather than intimidation. He is keenly aware of the energy he brings into a space now, though he admits it was not always that way. Early on, like many actors, instinct drove the work and sometimes instinct meant doing too much. It took years of watching other performers, asking uncomfortable questions, and learning the value of stillness to understand how much communication happens before dialogue ever begins.

These days he talks about presence less as something you project and more as something you allow. Breath, posture, and silence do more work than force ever could. Ironically, the less he tries to be powerful, the more that power seems to land. It is the kind of realization that usually arrives only after a few bruised egos and a lot of quiet observation.

That philosophy was put to the test in a very literal way when Paunovic stepped into the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians as Polyphemus. Playing a mythological figure that already lives rent free in millions of minds is a special kind of pressure. The temptation is to lean into scale, spectacle, and visual dominance. Paunovic went the opposite direction. Instead of trying to compete with the audience’s imagination, he focused on grounding the character emotionally. Monsters, he argues, stop being interesting the moment they stop being human. Polyphemus, for all his size and threat, is defined as much by limitation as power. Isolation, wounded pride, and a deep sense of misunderstanding sit underneath the mythology.

Preparation for the role included an exercise that sounds deceptively simple and is anything but. Working with Andrew McIlroy, Paunovic trained while wearing glasses modified to eliminate his peripheral vision. The result was immediate disorientation. Suddenly, dominance came with exposure. You feel watched. You feel vulnerable. You realize how much you rely on what you cannot see. That physical limitation unlocked the emotional truth of the character. Once vulnerability entered the picture, the anger and suspicion made sense. The myth stopped being symbolic and started being personal. This approach carries across Paunovic’s work in heightened genre worlds. Whether the setting is post apocalyptic, futuristic, or mythological, his instinct is to shrink the performance rather than inflate it. The bigger the world, the smaller the behavior needs to be. Truth does not scale. It either exists or it does not. Stillness, timing, and listening do more heavy lifting than expression ever could.

It is a sensibility that has served him well across projects like Hawkeye, The 100, Van Helsing, Snowpiercer, and War for the Planet of the Apes. Longevity, he says, has not come from chasing momentum or carefully curating an image. In fact, some of the most important moments in his career came from saying yes when it would have been safer to say no. If hesitation comes from fear or ego, that is usually his cue to lean in rather than back away.

That same instinct eventually pushed him into ownership and investment. While working on Genzeroes, a project he helped create alongside Matt Venibles and Jeremy Smith, Paunovic had a front row seat to the difference between contributing to something and actually owning it. The lesson stuck. Acting, by nature, is episodic. Ownership creates continuity. That thinking led to his role as a co founder of Legend Water Co., now in its second year and distributed in over nine hundred stores, including 7 Eleven and Choices. The irony, Paunovic notes, is that stepping into business did not pull him away from acting. It did the opposite. Financial stability removed urgency from creative decisions. He no longer walks onto set needing the job to solve a problem. He is there because he wants to be there. The work gets cleaner when survival is not driving the choice.

That balance is especially important as he takes on projects with real historical weight, including an upcoming series centered on Muhammad Ali produced by Michael B Jordan. Paunovic portrays William Faversham Jr., a key figure in the financial team that helped guide Ali from the Olympics into the professional ranks. For someone who comes from three generations of boxers and grew up idolizing Ali, the responsibility is personal. It is not about spectacle or imitation. It is about respect, humility, and understanding the moment when belief, risk, and opportunity collide.

Ask Paunovic what he wishes more people understood about building a life in this industry, and the answer is refreshingly unromantic. Careers are not built on singular moments. They are built on persistence. On staying curious. On checking your ego often enough to keep learning. The industry changes constantly. Protecting an image is a fast way to stall. Staying useful, open, and willing to grow is what keeps you in the game long enough for the work to meet you where you have evolved.

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Photos courtesy of Charles Zuckerman

Charles Zuckerman IG: CLICK HERE