Ancient Rome was a violent place.

Hospitals are very extreme places - you can be in a maternity room one minute, and by someone's bedside as they're dying the next.

As you mature and gain a semblance of wisdom and a sense of what life is all about... this is by no means true of everyone, but a lot of actors like to escape themselves. Inhabiting another person's persona is often a good way of escaping yourself.

A voice and an accent are two very different things. The voice of a man is how he speaks from his heart, right in the middle of him... And then you stick an accent on top of that.