He’s tall, handsome, British, and possibly the next James Bond, but he’ll never admit it or tell anyone Pierce Brosnan should be replaced on the next Bond adventure. Clive Owen is by all accounts a wonderfully polite British fellow. The kind that will make women swoon as he steps into legendary King Arthur’s shoes this week. It’s fascinating to look at Clive’s career and see that just a few years ago a role as a driver in some short promotional film’s for BMW would be his launching pad to big budget summer fare. Like I said, he has the looks and acting chops, but it’s still amazing how stars can come from just about anywhere. In talking to Clive a few weeks ago, he reflects on his decision to star in the BMW short films, working with Keira Knightly and Antoine Fuqua, the physicality of this project, his next projects, and the never ending James Bond rumor.

Did you ever think you’d get so popular from the BMW short films?

Clive: No, especially since I said no to them originally. When they first came to me I didn’t really understand it and ‘Croupier’ just sort of broken here and I was meeting a lot of interesting people and I was called ‘Do you want to do a series of commercials’ and I thought, ‘No, that’s not a smart thing to do.’ The first thing you do is a bunch of commercials. So I said no, and then it was sort of floating around a bit more, and I said, “I don’t feel right about that.’ Then right at the wire, and it was at the wire, they were just literally like two days before shooting them. They said ‘Look, read this script. This is the first one. John Frankenheimer’s directing it and Ang Lee’s doing the next one.’ I read the script and it’s a proper little movie, and I remember my family weren’t at home, they were away, so I said, ‘Yeah I’ll do it.’ And I called up a friend and said, ‘I’m going to L.A. I’m going to do this BMW thing.’ Jumped on a plane and literally was picked up at the airport and taken straight to a night shoot with John Frankenheimer, who I’d never met. Poured into his trailer and he showed me some guys driving in movies. ‘Look at this! This looks really good. Look at that guy he can drive it all.’ And by God, thank God I didn’t say no to it ‘cause it was, I worked with some of the, the great directors--treat.

Can you talk about working with Kiera?

Clive: Well, I think she’s hugely impressive, Kiera. It’s so easy to forget, and you constantly do when you hang out with her, how young she is. She doesn’t come across that young. She’s a very smart girl, a very centered girl, very unaffected, considering what’s happening in her life…at nineteen years old I don’t know how we’d be, but we’d probably a little crazy. And she’s not at all, and she’s got very sounds people around her, and she’s very rooted, and navigating her way through what must be a pretty crazy time, really impressively. She’s a key character in the movie. She’s the person that says, ‘Arthur you’re part of these people…you have the capability of possibly uniting everybody you have that responsibility, take it on’. I really enjoyed working with her.

Can you talk about working with Antoine and what kind of director he is?

Clive: I was a big fan of ‘Training Day.’ I thought it was a really fabulous film, really well directed, so I was very excited to be working with him. Especially when you read the script and see the interpretation I thought it was a pretty inspired joyous for him at the helm, because he’s got a dynamism and sort of energy about his direction that would be fresh for a film like this…his perspective, and orchestrating those big battle takes some doing to pull them off, and I think he’s just a dynamic shooter. I was very impressed.

Being British, did you take the story more personally?

Clive: No, I think there’s, people seem to assume that we were sort of King Arthur was at school and was everywhere. It is into the fabric of your upbringing, you do read story books about King Arthur. You see the movies like everybody does. You play with castles and knights, but that was about it. It wasn’t anything more then that.

What attracted you to the project?

Clive: Talking to David Franzoni [Writer of King Arthur] who had done all this research…the main threads of this movie are substantiated. They are based on research and he set it during a time when the Romans were pulling out Britain, which was pretty extraordinary…the fabric of society had just crumbled and it turned out to be chaos. There is evidence of this elite group of Sarmatian Russian warriors who were fighting under a Roman commander in Britain. I do believe that the origins of King Arthur were from a half Roman, half British soldier and he pulled that together in this story. Now of course, traditionalists, the romantic version…will hang on to that classic myth. But, they really--it’s as valid as any interpretation because when you look at all the where and how King Arthur lived…it’s such a period of time.

Can you talk about the physical demands of doing this film?

Clive: It’s all about horse riding, the whole movie for me. I hadn’t done that much at all, and not that successfully. I’d done a few movies riding a bit and not that well. I did the usual thing, every young actor does. You go for some period thing, and they say ‘Can you ride?’ and you say ‘Yeah of course,’ and then you go out and grab a couple of lessons quick. [Laughs] And they didn’t ask me on this one and we went through all the negotiations and then I had this little thing bugging me all the time going, ‘You can’t ride a horse. 70% of the movie is on a horse. Who are you kidding?’ And the day the deal was done, and that’s not a lie, I rang up Bruckheimer films and said, ‘I have to get on a horse tomorrow. I have to start now.’ And it was months before shooting. Luckily they where already gearing up, choosing who was going to be doing the stunts and who was going to provide the horses and I went and the most brilliant horse stunt guy taught me. Saw me through the whole thing, and I went five days a week for two months, and he slowly and steadily built me up until that horse I was on was a pretty huge powerful Andalusian, monster of an animal, and eventually, ‘cause I was so well taught and guided through I was pretty fearless. I’d do anything, and I’d look forward to doing anything and you see clearly, actors always say they do their own stunts, but you see clearly that it’s us riding at speed into some pretty serious environments, smoke, fire, huge crowds of noisy loud extras, and sometimes, I remember this, in the battles we rode into smoke without seeing what was through on the other side at quite a lick, and we just trust.

What’s your favorite King Arthur movie?

Clive: ‘Excalibur’ just because it was such a vivid perspective. And also in ‘Excalibur’ they really captured the idea it was a brutal scary dangerous chaotic world out there. You got that sense in ‘Excalibur,’ the world was crazy.

Do you think this role was an important one to take for your Hollywood career?

Clive: I always thought it was important – but…I like to do various types of roles – theater, and television - I never became in England prime time TV fodder – I went right off and did a little play – or an art house movie or something.

Are you currently in production on “Sin City?”

Clive: I just finished, I just come from there, yeah.

You’ve been in Austin?

Clive: Yeah, what a fantastic set up he’s [Robert Rodriguez] got there.

Had you ever been to Texas before?

Clive: No. It’s all in Austin, but he’s got a fantastic set up there…it’s a really healthy environment to create. He does everything. He has his own studio, it’s incredible. What a set up he’s got.

What other projects are you working on?

Clive: I did ‘Closer’ with Mike Nichols. It comes out in December. It was a really great experience with a fabulous cast. Jude Law and myself, and Julia Roberts, and Natalie Portman, it was a fantastic script, so that was a dream job. The next film I’m going to do is called ‘Derailed’ which is from a thriller, a novel, and it’s directed by a Swedish director called Hafstrom [Mikael]. He’s done this fabulous Swedish film called ‘Evil,’ which I saw and loved, and I’m really excited to be working with him.

Your name keeps popping up as a possible new Bond, any truth to that?

Clive: No, none truth whatsoever, total sort of media speculation. I think that Pierce Brosnan has been a great one, reinvigorated that whole franchise. Made that whole company a ton of money and as far as I know he’s doing another, and they should make that clear and back it to the hill!

If you have any questions, or comments, you can write me at jax@latinoreview.com.

KING ARTHUR OPENS JULY 7

Comment on this in our User Forums