Clive Owen (born October 3, 1964) is a Golden Globe and BAFTA award winning English actor, now a regular performer in Hollywood and independent American films.

He’s 43!

Owen was born in Coventry, West Midlands, England, the fourth of five brothers. When Owen was three, his father (a country and western singer) left the family.

Owen was raised by his mother and step-father, a railway ticket clerk, and only met his father again at the age of nineteen. While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from RADA in 1987 in a class including both Ralph Fiennes and Jane Horrocks. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several William Shakespeare plays. In an incident he later described as “very schmaltzy,” he met his future wife Sarah-Jane Fenton when the two performed the leads in Romeo and Juliet.

He became well known to North American audiences in the summer of 2001 after starring as The Driver in the BMW films. He then appeared in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, alongside an all-star cast including Helen Mirren and Ryan Phillippe. He has also appeared in The Bourne Identity, along with American actor Matt Damon. In 2003 he starred in other films including Trevor Preston’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead and Beyond Borders before taking on the title role in King Arthur. He took horse-riding lessons for the latter role.

Owen appeared in the West End and Broadway hit play Closer, by Patrick Marber, which again became a film, and was released in 2005. It is interesting to note that he played “Dan” in the play, but was “Larry” the dermatologist in the film version. His blistering, darkly comic portrayal of Larry in the film version earned him a lot of recognition as well as the Golden Globe and BAFTA award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He noted that the expectations of him since the Oscar nomination have not changed the way he approaches film-making, stating “I try, every film I do, to be as good as I can and that’s all I can do.

After Closer, he appeared in Derailed alongside Jennifer Aniston, the comic book thriller Sin City as the noir antihero Dwight McCarthy and as a mysterious bank robber in Inside Man. Despite public denials, Owen had long been rumored to be a possible successor to Pierce Brosnan in the role of James Bond. A public opinion poll in the United Kingdom in October 2005 (SkyNews) found that he was the publics number one choice to star in the next installment of the series. In that same month, however, it was announced that British actor Daniel Craig would become the next James Bond. In an interview in the September 2007 issue of Details Magazine, he claimed that he was never offered or even approached concerning the role. In 2006, Owen spoofed the Bond connection by making an appearance in the remake of The Pink Panther in which he plays a character named “Nigel Boswell, Agent 006″ (when he introduces himself to Inspector Clouseau he quips that Owen’s character is “one short of the big time”).

In 2006, Owen starred in the highly acclaimed Children of Men. He received widespread praise for his role as the former political activist-turned-reluctant hero Theo Faron. The film was nominated for various awards including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Owen worked on the screenplay, although he was uncredited. The next year he starred alongside Paul Giamatti in the film Shoot ‘Em Up.

He will next appear as Sir Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth I of England in the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Owen will be appearing in the 2007 Christmas special of the Ricky Gervais show Extras, as revealed in the video podcast teaser.

Personal Life:

Owen lives in London with his wife Sarah-Jane Fenton and their two daughters, Hannah and Eve.

In November 2006, he became patron of the Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich, England and launched an appeal for funds to repair deteriorating elements of the fabric.

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