Clive Owen

Clive Owen is an English actor born on 3 October 1964 in Keresley, Coventry, then in Warwickshire, the fourth of five sons of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen. His father, a country and western singer, left the family when Owen was three years old. Though a brief reconciliation occurred when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged. Owen has described his childhood as rough. Initially resistant to drama school, he reversed course in 1984 following an extended and unsuccessful search for work. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and subsequently worked at the Young Vic, where he performed in several Shakespearean productions.

Owen's early professional work was primarily in television. In 1988, he appeared in the BBC production of Precious Bane, playing Gideon Sarn, and in the Channel 4 film Vroom. He gained recognition in the United Kingdom through his lead role in the ITV series Chancer, which ran from 1990 to 1991, and later appeared in the Thames Television production of Lorna Doone. Critical attention followed his performance in Stephen Poliakoff's Close My Eyes (1991), a film about a brother and sister who enter into an incestuous relationship. Throughout the mid-1990s, Owen appeared in a range of television and film projects, including The Magician, Class of '61, Century, Nobody's Children, An Evening with Gary Lineker, Doomsday Gun, Return of the Native, and the Carlton detective series Sharman. In 1996, he appeared in his first major Hollywood film, The Rich Man's Wife, alongside Halle Berry, and the following year delivered a lead performance as Max in Bent (1997).

International recognition came with Croupier (1998), a Channel 4 film directed by Mike Hodges, in which Owen played a struggling writer who takes a job at a London casino and becomes entangled in a robbery scheme. He continued working in television and film around this period, appearing in the BBC1 drama The Echo, the film Greenfingers, and the BBC1 mystery series Second Sight. In 2001, he provided voice-over narration for the BBC2 documentary Walk On By and starred in a theatre revival of Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. That same year, North American audiences became familiar with Owen through his role as the Driver in The Hire, a series of BMW-sponsored short films directed by prominent filmmakers. He also appeared in Robert Altman's Gosford Park and in The Bourne Identity (2002).

Owen first performed the role of Dan in the Royal National Theatre production of Patrick Marber's play Closer before taking on the role of Larry in the 2004 film adaptation. His portrayal of Larry earned him a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The mid-2000s brought a series of prominent film roles, including Dwight McCarthy in the comic book thriller Sin City (2005), a lead part in Derailed (2005) alongside Jennifer Aniston, a supporting role in Inside Man (2006), and the lead in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006), for which Owen contributed to the screenplay without receiving a screen credit. He appeared as Sir Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and starred alongside Paul Giamatti in Shoot 'Em Up (2007). In 2009, he led The International, which he described as a paranoid political thriller, and starred in The Boys Are Back, an Australian adaptation of Simon Carr's book The Boys Are Back in Town.

Owen played Ernest Hemingway in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), directed by Philip Kaufman and written by Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl, with Nicole Kidman co-starring as Martha Gellhorn. The role earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. He also starred in Shadow Dancer (2012), a UK/Ireland co-production about a young mother involved with Irish republicanism, directed by James Marsh and co-starring Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson, and Aidan Gillen. In Blood Ties (2013), directed by Guillaume Canet and co-starring Marion Cotillard, Owen appeared in a further leading role; the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He played Dr. John W. Thackery on the Cinemax medical drama The Knick, a performance that earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama.

Owen made his Broadway debut in 2015 in a revival of Harold Pinter's Old Times at the American Airlines Theatre. In October 2017, he returned to Broadway as René Gallimard in a revival of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly at the Cort Theatre. In 2019, he appeared in the West End production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana at the Noël Coward Theatre, playing the defrocked Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, and also appeared in the film The Song of Names as Dovidl Rapaport.

In 2021, Owen starred in the psychological romance horror miniseries Lisey's Story and portrayed President Bill Clinton in the third season of American Crime Story, subtitled Impeachment. He subsequently appeared in A Murder at the End of the World (2023) and Monsieur Spade (2024). Owen met his wife, Sarah-Jane Fenton, in 1988.