Clive Owen

He crossed the Atlantic to appear in the ABC drama "Class of '61" (1993), as an Irish graduate of West Point who goes off to fight in the Civil War. Owen received strong notices for his seductive hedonist in "The Return of the Native" (CBS, 1994) and as Halle Berry's lover in "The Rich Man's Wife" (1996). After starring as a British private investigator in the series "Sharman" (1996), Owen essayed his most challenging role to date, playing a concentration camp inmate in Sean Matthias' film version of "Bent" (1997). As Max, the actor a powerful performance, skillfully negotiating the characters evolution from selfish and debonair decadent to caring individual. Owen and co-star Lothaire Bluteau wonderfully worked off one another in their scenes and both delivered star-making performances.

After co-starring on the London stage in "Closer" (1997), the actor appeared opposite Alex Kingston in director Mike Hodges' absorbing crime drama "The Croupier" (1999), the film that would provide his breakthrough role as a hard-boiled dealer who conspires to defraud a casino. Owens' performances prompted critic Roger Ebert to compare his steely reserve to that of Sean Connery, noting "he doesn't give himself wholly to the action, but seems to be keeping a part of his mind outside of it, measuring and calculating." Not surprisingly, Owen quickly began topping the lists of potential successors to the James Bond role after Pierce Brosnan. Meanwhile, the actor's popularity increased when he starred in a series of four "Second Sight" telepics for the BBC, playing hot shot British detective Ross Tanner in 1999-2000, and he became an icon of cool as The Driver in a series of advertising-driven, Avant-garde action shorts sponsored by BMW (at BMWFilms.com) and helmed by directors John Woo, Ang Lee, Kar Wai Wong, Guy Ritchie, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Tony Scott, Joe Carnahan and John Frankenheimer in 2001-02.

On the big screen, Owen again impressed with his turn in "Gosford Park" (2001), director Robert Altman's delightful ensemble riff on British drawing room murder mysteries, playing the brooding Robert Park, who emerges as a central figure in the storyline. Off that success he was cast in the big budget studio adaptation of Robert Ludlum's spy thriller "The Bourne Identity" (2002) as the ruthless, steel-nerved assassin The Professor. Owen next starred opposite Angelina Jolie, in the disappointing melodrama "Beyond Borders" (2003) the story of a disaster-relief worker who falls in love with a socially conscious wealthy woman, but he rebounded strongly when he reunited with Hodges for the noirish "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (2004), playing a retired British gangster who emerges from his secluded countryside life to investigate the death of his brother. Next up was Antoine Fuqua's supposedly "demystified" retelling of the legend of "King Arthur" (2004), a big budget, action-oriented film that cast Owen as England's once and future king, this time set in a more historically correct context. Owen the appeared in the highly literate, often romantically brutal drama "Closer" directed by Mike Nichols, playing part of two couples (including Natalie Portman, Julian Roberts and Jude Law) who become messily intertwined in a love/sex gender war. For his hard-edged performance, Owen took home the Golden Globe trophy for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. Hot off his Golden Globe win, Owen earned a spot in the Best Supporting Actor category for the Academy Awards.

Amid furious rumors that he was being courted to become the next James Bond (Owen later admitted he wasn't especially interested in the role, which ultimately went to Daniel Craig), Owen appeared to splendid effect in director Robert Rodriguez and writer-artist Frank Miller's co-venture "Sin City" (2005), a visceral, visually stunning adaptation of Miller's crime noir comic book series. Headlining the segment drawn from Miller's story arc "The Big Fat Kill," Owen played the hard-edged but noble Dwight McCarthy, who becomes embroiled in a sudden, violent battle over control of Sin City's Old Town, where prostitutes armed to the teeth reign. A portion of Owen's storyline, the eerie sequence in which he drives the talking corpse of the corrupt cop Jackie Boy (Benicio del Toro) was also directed by Quentin Tarantino. Next was the thriller "Derailed" (2005), which cast Owen and Jennifer Aniston as two married business executives having an affair who are forced into violent and illicit acts by a sadistic criminal, and must turn the tables to save their families.

After the blackmail thriller came and went without much notice, Owen starred in Spike Lee’s impressive genre piece, "Inside Man" (2006), playing a brilliant and cool-headed thief who remains one step ahead of a smooth-talking hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) in an effort to pull off the perfect heist. Owen was then set to be seen in "Shoot-Em-Up" (lensed 2006), an action thriller about a mysterious man who delivers a baby during a shoot out and is entrusted with protecting the child. Nest he was cast as Sir Walter Raleigh in "The Golden Age" (lensed 2006), Shekhar Kapur’s follow up to "Elizabeth" (1998) in which the Virgin Queen (Cate Blanchett) becomes involved in a relationship with the famed poet and explorer. Owen finished out the year on a high note, starring in Alfonso Cuarón’s the multi-award nominated "Children of Men" (2006), a futuristic dystopian tale about a former political activist (Owen) turned down-and-out bureaucrat who is convinced by a former lover (Julianne Moore) to help transport a young pregnant woman (Clare-Hope Ashitey) - who carries with the world’s only child after all humanity has become infertile - to the fabled Human Project in order to save the future.