Most men forced to wear a bright, purple suit would look like Barney the dinosaur or the Fruit Of The Loom plum.

Actor Panou makes his I Was A Sixth Grade Alien costume look like Armani.

"It's actually my favourite colour. I got really lucky," the thirtyish actor laughs, taking a break at the south Etobicoke warehouse where the YTV kids show shoots.

Panou, whose single name translates to "God among us" in Creole, plays McNally, a straight-laced bodyguard to an otherworldly boy. But on camera and off, he plays role model to the show's underaged cast.

"Because I don't drink and I don't smoke and I definitely don't do drugs, they look at that and they say, 'Wow, well if Panou can do it, maybe it's not as cool as my friends say it is.' "

While the questions the kids come to him with occasionally shock him, it's unlikely they're enduring such childhood trials as did their mentor.

"I had an extremely, extremely tough childhood, one which I think helped shape me into who I am, but one which I would never wish upon anybody," Panou says.

Orphaned in his native Haiti, he was adopted at age five by a Montreal couple who had already taken in a girl from Vietnam, a girl who was part-Native and part-black and a boy from Bangladesh.

"Adoption was very popular at that time and I think that's mainly why it happened," Panou says. "I think it was a bit much. About two years later, my adopted parents broke up and got divorced and my adoptive father got remarried. During that whole thing, my adoptive mother wanted to keep us separate from our adoptive father, and then didn't treat us well."

By 15, he'd quit school and was living on Toronto's streets. Sometimes he had four jobs at once, from waiting tables to furniture-moving. When he could afford to, he went to school. When he couldn't, he studied via correspondence. Ultimately, he graduated with marks high enough for the University of Windsor and earned a degree there in theatre and classical percussion.

His first break in show business came six years ago when he was upgraded from extra to a speaking part on Howie Mandel's skit show Sunny Skies.

Since then, he has guested on familiar Toronto-made series, including Forever Knight, F/X: The Series, Nikita, Due South and Earth Final Conflict, and has small roles in the cable movies Elvis Meets Nixon, Airborne and Strange Justice.

On this fall's Robocop: Prime Directives TV movie series, he's a corporate mouthpiece called Saint Spokesperson. In the coming feature movie about the life of Abbie Hoffman called Steal This Movie, he's cast as Black Panther leader Bobby Seale.

His Web site (www.panou.net) gives equal prominence to his personal struggles as to his professional credits.

"Because I'm proud of it," he says simply. "It's to say that, you know what, when everything's knocking you down and telling you you can't do it, if you stay strong and you believe, you can. There's nothing that you can't overcome."