His latest adjustment is to Broadway role

Boris Kodjoe, a pro tennis player turned actor, makes his Broadway debut tonight in the revival of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." (NEW YORK TIMES)

ATLANTA - Boris Kodjoe has sat on an elephant and shot fashion campaigns with Naomi Campbell. He has played a delivery man on the Showtime series "Soul Food" - later marrying his character's love interest, actress Nicole Ari Parker. And he has filmed two movies - Tyler Perry's "Madea's Family Reunion" and "The Gospel" - in Atlanta, the city he now calls home.

Tonight, the 35-year-old actor who once made People magazine's list of the world's most beautiful people takes another major career step - making his Broadway debut in the celebrated revival of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

The strikingly handsome, 6-foot-4 former professional tennis player will play the seething, catatonically drunk Brick in a cast that includes James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama, and Anika Noni Rose as Maggie the Cat.

Kodjoe (pronounced "ko-jo") is a European black man who was born in Vienna and grew up in Germany. His mother is German. His father is from Ghana. His story is part Arnold Schwarzenegger, part Barack Obama.

"They see you as an African-American actor," says Kodjoe, who fills in for Terrence Howard in the sold-out Broadway hit through May 4. "Meanwhile, every time I step in front of a camera, I do a foreign film, because this is not my mother language. This is not my mother tongue.

"When I first got that acting bug, I knew I didn't stand a chance to make it unless I got rid of my accent, because a lot of German-speaking actors come to Hollywood and they end up playing the Russian and the German Nazi.

"I knew I wasn't going to convince them to let me play the Nazi and stuff," he jokes of his skin color. "So I got rid of my accent."

Kodjoe's maternal grandmother is Jewish. To survive Hitler's regime, she married a Nazi.

"In the '60s, my mother came home with a black man, and my grandfather almost had a heart attack," Kodjoe says. His grandfather eventually grew to accept his black grandson.

A private man, Kodjoe lives in north Atlanta with his wife and two children.

The actor says he isn't nervous about Broadway, a proving ground that's been a challenge for movie stars like Julia Roberts and theater newcomers such as Sean Combs and Usher. "Right now, I'm giddy."

Like Brick, a fallen football hero, Kodjoe was once an ambitious athlete. He started tennis at 3 and went pro at 16. Before college, he "crashed and burned."

"My back went out on me, and I found I had three herniated discs. I had grown so fast, and all that tennis, six hours a day, was too much."

Says Debbie Allen, the play's director: "He went into a whole depression for over a year, didn't want to speak to anybody, was disgusted with the world. So he has that in his back pocket. He is that beautiful, glorious-looking athlete, but he is also grounded in something very real."