British star-on-the-rise Clive Owen wants to make it clear that he is not in talks to be the next James Bond. In seemingly good spirits while talking about the non-Camelot take on King Arthur, in which he has assumed the title role, Owen is clearly getting fed up with journalists’ questions about rumours that he is in talks to be the next 007.
”It is a complete rumour and I don’t know where it comes from,” he says. ”I think that Pierce Brosnan is a fantastic Bond, who has really invigorated the whole franchise. [He] has made that company a lot of money and they should be saying ‘He’s our man’ until he steps down. So let’s just leave it at that!”
Nor does Owen aspire to be the next Bond. ”I really don’t think about it,” he says emphatically. Even though he has been a working actor since the late 1980s, major success eluded him until 1998’s Croupier put him on the map. More recently, The Bourne Identity and Beyond Borders gave Owen international exposure. With the release of King Arthur, he has a potential blockbuster on his CV.
Owen is modestly philosophical about his success. ”I am just hugely grateful and feel very lucky,” he says. ”It is when you least expect it. Croupier had such an unusual, weird history. It made an impact here [in Britain] and suddenly I was introduced to an American audience, so since then I have been offered a lot of movies.”
The actor loves the challenge of playing a variety of characters, another reason James Bond remains relatively unappealing. ”The one thing I have always done is to keep all options open and keep it as varied as possible.
”I have three films coming out this year, including King Arthur and Closer, directed by Mike Nichols. I like to keep mixing it up and you know that if you take on some huge franchise thing like Bond, then the deal would be that that you couldn’t be so diverse and fresh.”
So it was with no sense of trepidation that Owen stepped into the armour of King Arthur, but this is hardly the Arthur of Richard Harris or his predecessors. Owen was immediately drawn to this version of the classic character ”because it was such a radical take on the whole story and I didn’t feel any of the weight of responsibility for it”.
In this edgier, more realistic King Arthur, set around 450AD, the Roman Empire is crumbling and the British Isles are thrown into anarchy as the Saxons begin to invade. A would-be king emerges to unite them — Arthur, with his concept of a Round Table of united knights.
Owen defines his Arthur as ”a guy who has very strong beliefs. The challenge for him is that he has to change. The arc of the journey is his whole belief system, which is changing, as well as the world and Rome. He has enormous faith and that faith is also being challenged.”
Owen found it difficult to identify with the character on a personal level, but believes it is not important to do so with any characters: ”I don’t think you necessarily identify and believe in the motifs of the character,” he says, ”but you have to want to play it and want to commit to the lines. I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is. They don’t necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.”
Shooting King Arthur was physically tough for the actor, who had never ridden a horse before. But Owen took advantge of the fact the movie was being shot in Ireland. ”I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a little taste — and it’s true that the Guinness in Ireland tastes different,” he says with a smile.
Keeping things diverse, Owen has just wrapped director Robert Rodriguez’s new film, Sin City — ”a fantastic experience”. It is based on the Frank Miller graphic-novel series.
And Owen is also part of the star-studded cast of Mike Nichols’s Closer, alongside Julia Roberts, Nathalie Portman and Jude Law. Owen was in the original play on the London stage, and this is a job that he relishes: ”I think I said to Mike halfway through the movie, ‘If I just keep doing this for the rest of my career, that would make me happy.”’