The Chicago Sun Times:

With Angelina Jolie, King Arthur and BMW, Clive Owen is 'Beyond' grateful --October 19, 2003

It's not that the British actor constitutes Hollywood's latest royal pain. Owen is just in character because he's playing King Arthur in next summer's big-budget, Jerry Bruckheimer, kick-the-Romans-on-their-cans, historical epic.

No one needs knights at a round table or even Hollywood executives in a glass conference room to suggest that Owen has been crowned Hollywood's Next Big Thing. But just don't tell His Liege.

"Am I really excited about my career? The truth is I'm pretty tired," Owen says with a yawn, as he sips some caffeinated tea at the Dorchester Hotel. After all, he spent the last night defending his knights, slaying some extras and galloping through a forest in flames.

Alas, King Arthur's work is never done, although this ruler looks pretty good in his khaki pants, black sweater and with those large green eyes blazing.

Owen is just beginning to catch on as an actor and sex symbol. He has been mentioned as the next Bond candidate when Pierce Brosnan retires. He was just hired by Mike Nichols to star opposite Julia Roberts and Jude Law in "The Closer." Coming right up, he co-stars with Angelina Jolie in "Beyond Borders," which opens Friday.

All this, and yes, he's trying to remain humble.

"I'm just hugely grateful that things are going very well," Owen says. "The best part of it is working with great people. I just want to make good movies, as simple as that sounds."

He signed on to do "Beyond Borders" because he enjoyed the relationship between his rugged relief worker character and the socialite turned adventurer (Jolie).

"It's a tough relationship -- a tough love story," he says. "He doesn't like her for a lot of the movie, and then it becomes a slow burn."

Owen learned a lot about relief workers on the set. "The people who are in these real situations were our technical advisers. The man who runs a camp to help Ethiopian famine victims was invaluable. We had to make this film authentic.

"I'm just playing a fictional movie character," he says. "These real people leave their whole lives and go to a crisis in hostile, dangerous environments and try to help people who are dying. It's awesome, and it's humbling."

As for King Arthur, he says, "I just got a call one day saying, 'It's Jerry Bruckheimer's office. Jerry and [director] Antoine Fuqua ["Training Day"] want to bring you out to Los Angeles to talk to you about King Arthur.'"

It turns out that Bruckheimer had heard rumors about Owen's work in "Beyond Borders" and asked director Martin Campbell to see some preliminary footage.

"The next day, I got a call saying, 'We want you to be Arthur.'"

Owen immediately wanted in, but not just for the honor of having his name over the title.

"The actual idea of taking on a film of that size and scale is exciting only if the work is good. What's the point otherwise?"

What appealed to him was the script. "It's a new take on the whole King Arthur story -- unlike anything you've ever seen before," he says. "What I didn't realize is that King Arthur is actually a myth that developed over hundreds of years and has been slowly pieced together.

"There's this sort of romantic vision of Arthur. Our version is set earlier than it's usually set. We have it at 500 A.D. as opposed to medieval times. Basically, the Roman empire is crumbling.

"I play Arthur, who is half-Roman," Owen says. "He's a commander of a crack team of military knights who, at the beginning of the movie, gets the mission from hell -- to go into dangerous, unknown territory and rescue a family as the Saxons are invading by the thousands, and the rebels are out there fighting. Meanwhile, Arthur has always held onto Rome as something he wants to return to and something he reveres, but it keeps changing."

Ultimately, the movie is about faith. "His faith is called into question," Owen says. "It's about how he begins to accept the place where he lives and the people who he's with. He becomes a man of the people."

"How about that!" Owen says, laughing after realizing that he can't stop talking about this project. "I just got to the end of the movie."

Owen spent two months in training before cameras rolled. "I've since become very attached to my horse, Bohemian," he says of his steed. "On this film, I ask Bohemian to do the most extraordinary things. We ride near fire and into these massive crowds. It's a very hostile environment, and I need my horse to ride right into the middle of it. He has to take me in there. I depend on Bohemian to deliver what's required."

Owen, 39, was raised in Keresley, Warwickshire, England, with his four brothers, his stay-at-home mum and a father who worked for the British railroad system. The working-class family was surprised when young Clive insisted that he wanted to be on the stage. "I started in a school play playing the Artful Dodger in 'Oliver!' I still am that character," he says, laughing.

"I just never wanted to do anything else. I loved career day at school because I was the one lad who never hesitated. I said I wanted to act, and my friend Dominic insisted he would play guitar. We got a lot of stares."

For the record, Dominic still plays guitar.

A British TV series called "Chancer" (1990) made him a hit in the UK; he followed that role with parts in English films, including "Close My Eyes" (1991) and "Bent" (1997). The surprise indie hit "Croupier" (1998) put him on the map in America. He increased his stature with "Greenfingers" (2000), "Gosford Park" (2001) and "The Bourne Identity" (2002). He also has done a series of short films for BMW, which are shown on the automaker's Web site.

Did he get a free BMW?

"Mind your own business," he responds, laughing.

At home in England, he works in his gardens and tends to his wife, actress Sarah Jane Fenton, and their daughters, Hannah, 6, and Eve, 3.

He insists they lead a very simple life. "A great night is just going to see a movie quietly with my wife and then coming home and tucking the girls in."

Distributed by Big Pictures News