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There was a time when a busy movie career for a British actor meant a re-location to Hollywood and a string of villainous roles. But those times have changed, Clive Owen tells FOCUS.
The title of Clive Owen's new film is apt in more ways than one. The International is a pacy thriller set among the heady world of global high finance and - topically enough - features a dastardly cabal of corrupt bankers as its villains.
It's the job of Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Owen) and his colleague in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) to unravel their tangled web of dodgy dealings and bring these powerful bad guys to justice. This is where the credit crunch gets personal, through the foresight of screenwriter Eric Warren Singer's prescient script.
"It's amazing to think that Eric started writing this about six years ago," Owen notes, of a story loosely inspired by the BCCI scandal. "When I read the script, it felt like it was a subject that was worth discussing.
"But no-one could have predicted how timely it has become, the whole thing about us pursuing a huge bank that we believe to be totally corrupt, questioning whether they're using money appropriately and whether they're sound and trustworthy. It's just become the big topic of the moment, and it's not that far-fetched."
In recent years the 46 year old actor has come of age in movie terms, confidently sharing the screen with major stars like Julia Roberts - with whom he is reunited in Duplicity - Cate Blanchett and Denzel Washington and looking like he belongs in their company.
It's a far cry from the boyish hero of the television series Chancer, further still from the rather narrow minded casting exercised by Hollywood studios for big movies when Owen was starting out in his career.
"When I first started acting I'd go up for the occasional movie" he recalls, "and you were never seen for anything other than a baddie, ever. That's all the English actors were used for. But the whole film thing has completely opened up.
"Now there are movie stars from everywhere, from Australia, England, Spain, I think because the international market has become so strong and there’s so much money to be made globally, not just in America. The whole thing seems to have opened up."
And it's worth noting that just as the best actor for any given role will be cast, they are also able to maintain their original accents rather than being forced to affect an American one.
"Again that would not have been the case 10 years ago, but that's less of an issue now. It seems to be that the whole thing has become much more open," he smiles, "internationally."
And so for Owen and actors of his generation, and younger ones unfamiliar with the old typecasting clichés, the film business has become a little more global as the world got a little smaller.
Contentedly basing himself in London with his wife and two daughters, Owen is not likely to be leaving for the siren call of LA and its environs, now that he is old enough and wise enough to deal with the success coming his way. Though he admits, as a young man, his head might well have been turned.
"I was in a big TV show when I was very young, so to a certain extent I've been through a process of dealing with what that kind of attention and celebrity could be. It's something that nobody teaches you.
"You learn to negotiate it, you navigate it and you find a way of dealing with it. But when you're very young and you're thrown into it, it can be very disorientating. The problem is that it takes the attention away from what it is you actually do. That’s when it's very easy to get sidetracked.
"There's so much stuff going on. I think it's important to remember that, ultimately, the few minutes a day you're in front of the camera on a movie is when you have to deliver. That's the work, that's where it all stops and keeping your eye on that is the discipline you really need as an actor."
Clive Owen recognises the significance of a profile in Hollywood to maintain a presence in the movies, he’s just grateful that you no longer have to leave Blighty behind to achieve it.
"Hollywood has been very good to me," he nods. "It was a tiny film, Croupier, that literally changed my whole career, that small film was the first thing that made any impact for me in America. It opened up a world and I’m still reaping the benefits."
ANWAR BRETT
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