Issue Date: December 10, 2006
Clive Owen: Dad first, star second
Co-stars like Jennifer Aniston and Julianne Moore take supporting roles to his wife and daughters.
By Gregory Katz
Owen's dueling commitments to work and family mean he lives two very different lives.
|
Call Clive Owen the reluctant star. He doesn't use his sizzling green eyes to seduce. He rations his charisma. On screen and off, Hollywood's most intriguing leading man seems determined to fit in -- dropping his kids off at school, loping to a table in a packed restaurant without drawing a single glance, strolling through London's crowded streets unnoticed in pressed jeans and a corduroy jacket, clutching a black leather Armani briefcase containing Bob Dylan's latest record.
"I think it's the best thing Dylan's done in such a long time," Owen says while scanning the menu at a tiny restaurant owned by the son of a good friend. At first he declines any wine, showing characteristic caution around people he doesn't know well. Then he relents and lets me talk him into a glass of white Spanish wine along with spicy squid and a low-cal plate of halibut.
At 42, Owen's time is now. He uses reserved body language to shrink into the background so he can eat in peace, but his films are winning him devout followers from London to Los Angeles. No longer playing supporting roles, he is exploding across the screen in four major upcoming films (including this month's "Children of Men" and next year's "The Golden Age" with Cate Blanchett). GQ magazine put him on the September cover and hailed him as "The Next Great Actor" in an issue that sold and sold. No one, it seems, can resist that face and those eyes.
Owen is so tall, mysterious and menacing that people said he should be the next James Bond. But instead of using his imposing screen presence to cash in on a legendary, ready-made film franchise, he is starring in "Children of Men," playing an anti-007 role as a deeply demoralized man in a dark drama that opens Christmas Day. The movie takes place 21 years from now, when terrorism, environmental disaster and mass infertility threaten mankind with extinction.
The topics may sound grim, but these are the things that consume the movie's most simmering star, who is raising two young daughters with his wife, actress Sarah-Jane Fenton. Owen already is worried about the world they will inherit. Hannah, 9, and Eve, 7, aren't allowed to watch the news, Owen says: "I shield them. That's not a bad thing." And he's perplexed by the same everyday concerns that bedevil most parents, like how in the world to get his daughters off the couch and away from the TV, which he says makes the girls act "very strange" and "not quite natural" after two hours of viewing.
A dueling commitment to work and family means he lives two very different lives. Owen spends long months on the road, completely immersed in filmmaking, then he comes home and tries to settle back into the family routine in posh north London.
The transitions are not always easy. Owen says his girls are only now old enough to grasp that he's going away because he has to, not because he wants to. His older daughter still occasionally gets angry about his comings and goings, and he frets that his prolonged absences make his daughters feel insecure because they, like all children, love routine. He credits his wife, who gave up acting to be a full-time mom, with keeping the family going while he gallivants around the world.
"There are periods of time, chunks and chunks of time, when I'm not there and she is like a single parent," Owen says, sounding like a man well aware of his good fortune in finding a mate who will put up with him. "She is on her own with two kids. And I'm blessed because she used to act, and she understands what the business is, and she's terribly supportive and terribly unimpressed. She's about the family, giving them a center. She's obsessed about them not being spoiled because of the privileges that we get. So I'll be off shooting, and she will be at some campsite somewhere with the kids, grounded, real, and I beyond appreciate the fact that she holds it together."
His juggling act seems to be working. "He is at the top level now, one of the leading men with weight, with a sense of humor, and he doesn't take himself too seriously," says "Children of Men" director Alfonso Cuarón. "We really messed him up and grayed his hair, and he wanted to make it even more radical by wearing these big, ugly glasses. But the female members of the crew convinced me not to do that."
It's that raw sensuality that attracted director Mike Hodges, who cast Owen in 'Croupier," the 1998 movie that finally launched Owen's career following a number of so-so big-screen releases.
"Clive just had 'it,' " Hodges says. "This is in addition to being a very good actor. He's not conscious of his sexuality, and I think that's very sexual."
Owen's Hollywood ascent has been pretty unorthodox. He had decided at age 11 to become an actor, despite parental admonitions that he should have a backup plan. In his 20s, he walked away from a British prime-time TV hit that had made him the McDreamy of Great Britain. Following 2005's disappointing "Derailed" with Jennifer Aniston, he was unafraid to spend virtually all of Spike Lee's "Inside Man" concealed behind a mask that obscured those smoldering eyes.
Owen seems aghast at the idea that he plays up his sex appeal on screen. His only movie-star touch is the photogenic three-day stubble he wears at all times. And, oh yes, a taste for Armani suits, personally fitted and designed for him by Giorgio himself.
Raised in a crowded, working-class neighborhood by his mother and stepfather after his father abandoned the family, he sees bustling London as a perpetual Christmas for someone who grew up resenting the riches and opportunities others enjoyed while he and his four brothers scraped by.
"I came from a very small, claustrophobic town in Coventry, and I ran to London" at age 19 for drama school, Owen says. There, he got the chance to play Romeo to his future wife's Juliet. Predictably, the two fell in love. Surprisingly, they stayed together and married in 1995. "There is nothing more schmaltzy than Romeo and Juliet," he says with his deep bass laugh. "They are the ultimate lovers. Weirdly, the guy who directed it did the play three times, and each time, the Romeo and Juliet got together. But I think we're the only ones who saw it through and are still together."
Cover and cover story photographs by George Lange for USA WEEKEND
Grooming by Dorka Nieradzik; styling by Georgina Hodson; chair courtesy Paul Smith
Go to top
Clive's Crazy Connections
We met up with the star in his neighborhood pub. But his universe is much bigger than that. Here are four outrageous orbits.
By Reed Tucker
Owen appeared in "Sin City" with Bruce Willis ... Willis sometimes wears a bad hairpiece, like Marv Albert does ... Albert used to be the voice of the New York Knicks ... Owen saw the Knicks with Spike Lee to clinch his role in "Inside Man.
Owen appeared in the movie "Gosford Park" with Ryan Phillippe ... Phillippe recently separated from Reese Witherspoon ... Witherspoon reportedly hired celeb divorce lawyer Robert Kaufman ... Kaufman repped Jennifer Aniston when she split from Brad Pitt ... Aniston was in the movie "Derailed" with Owen.
Owen is married to Sarah-Jane Fenton ... Fenton appeared in "A Good Man in Africa" with John Lithgow ... Lithgow pitches Campbell's soup ... as did Orson Welles ... Welles had a documentary on his life shot by Mike Hodges ... Hodges directed Owen in "Croupier."
Owen attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art ... Richard Attenborough heads the Royal Academy ... Attenborough directed Pierce Brosnan in "Grey Owl ... "Brosnan was James Bond, a role for which Owen was said to have been considered.
|
