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Clive Owen

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Clive Owen has become universally well-liked by males and females, young and old for a few remarkably simple reasons. He keeps his integrity by choosing diverse movies that appeal to him -- both big-budgeted Hollywood stuff (like Sin City) and offbeat smaller films (like the much-acclaimed Children of Men). He's very attractive but seemingly without vain, and stays out of the tabloids (a twelve-year-long marriage and two kids might help). He's genuinely talented, and everyone he's worked with has nothing but good things to say about him.

And he makes it all look easy. What a jerk.

We had the chance to talk with the star about his new flick Shoot 'Em Up, which co-stars Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci and is a straight-up action movie with some of the most inventive fight choreography seen in years. "The sequence of events were: I was pitched the movie. Didn't think it was going to be my thing," Owen says. "From the minute I read the first page, I was like, 'this guy's insane.' Literally. It starts with a shoot out, [the main character] delivers a baby during it, and it goes on from there. And I was like, if this guy can pull it off, it'll be the most freshest, most original, wild, entertaining film."

Owen stars as a guy whose name we don't really ever know but is called Mr. Smith. He's a man with no past - even when we find out about his past, we're not sure if it's the truth. All he's got are ridiculous skills at shooting bad guys, and a lot of carrots. Just 'cause he likes carrots. "The carrot came in handy. It was a stroke of genius, I think, starting the movie with me stabbing somebody to death with a carrot. 'Cause it says from the outset: don't take this film too seriously, guys." Has Clive Owen actually just made carrots...cool? "Having championed the vegetable, I've tried to make them cool, and I've got to see it through. It was the challenge of the movie, one of the Michael Davis quirks that I found a little bit strange, but I tried valiantly to make the character come across as cool."

He's talking about his director, a man completely unexperienced with big-budget action movies. Davis's previous credits include movies like Prehysteria! 2. "The concern was that Michael hadn't done a film of this scale," Owen says. "It's one thing writing, 'This is John Woo's wet dream.' I mean, John Woo is a master of the action genre. So I met him to see if he could pull it off. And first of all, I thought he looked like if he didn't make a movie, he was going to explode. And I felt a responsibility ...

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