He’s a curious guy, when you consider him, sitting across from you at lunch in Liverpool. Compelling to watch and handsome to look at. But a bit of a cipher, really. Maybe more than most actors, a chameleon. Sure, you can name the big Clive Owen roles—Closer, Sin City, Inside Man, Children of Men—but when it comes to the persona, the image, the man, what do you really feel about him? For a movie star, Owen is oddly free of vibe. He’s there...but not.
And maybe that’s it. He possesses that quality that is too rare now in leading men: mystique. Spend time with him and you’re reminded of a line of narration used to describe his character in Croupier, the low-budget 1998 crime drama that vaulted the then 34-year-old Englishman to U.S. stardom: "He had become the still center of that spinning wheel.... The world turned round him, leaving him miraculously untouched_._" Owen, too, seems content to let the world spin around him, even as that world often wonders out loud where he has gone.
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"A career move?" he scoffs, staring out the window at a soccer field in the distance, when I tell him that The Knick, his hypnotic and intense collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, feels like a calculated move, a bit of a, well, comeback. "I don’t even know what that is. The best career move is to be good, and the best way to be good is to be hungry for it."
The way Clive Owen sees it, Clive Owen never went away. He’s simply been building the career he wants—not the one you (or anyone else) want for him. In The Knick, which Cinemax has already renewed for a second season, he plays Dr. John Thackery, a quasi-genius surgeon in the squalid cauldron that is 1900s New York City. By day, Dr. Thackery struggles to advance the nascent science of modern surgery; by night, he holes up in a local opium den and blitzes himself on cocaine. (That’s just episode one.)
"What I’ve always loved about acting—and some people don’t—is the unknown," Owen says. "I love the idea of the unexpected. Some people aren’t cut out for that. It’s good to be scared."
Who influences you?
David Bowie. I came across him at 14 and at one point wound up owning everything he’d ever done, including bootlegs, and just was totally blown away by him. And I’ve said before, and I mean it, that he probably had more to do with me becoming an actor than any actor.
Because he’s such a shape-shifter?
Yeah, and because there was just... You know, it’s very difficult later on. I took my girls to the V&A [Victoria and Albert Museum] exhibition, you know, and they got it then; they did get it a bit. They saw all the different phases he went through. It’s very hard, because so many people composed him. It was so derivative of what he was doing, the whole of radically going this way and this way—there was something about that, that I just found so exciting. The potential to do anything. And I sort of found that in his music. I loved the way he went everywhere. I thought there was nothing like him, and I found that inspiring.
How do you imagine yourself at 70?
Hopefully alive. [laughs]
It’s all uphill from there.
Slower. [laughs]
Still working?
Hopefully.
You’re not a guy who thinks, "I’ll retire"?
No. Whatever age you are, there’s a role that’s about who you are and where you are. There’s parts for that age that you’ll be rich, that you can bring things to. So unless I was incapable, I imagine myself still working, yeah.
When did you first feel grown-up?
Part of me still doesn’t. You know, if you’re the same age as me, 50...I never think of myself as that age, ever. I’ve got an age that I do think of myself. It certainly isn’t 50._ [laughs]_ It’s an attitude, really. I’ve got friends who are older than me—a good ten, fifteen years—and I always look at them like, "I hope to God I don’t look like that." I’ve done that the past ten, fifteen years, going, "God, I hope when I’m that age..." ’Cause their spirit, their wit, their energy, is no different from... I don’t feel like I’m a kid, I just feel like, when it comes to things like work, I get set alight the same way as I did when I started, when that passion hit and I thought, "I want to do it." I read a great script, or a really great project comes my way, I still get hit the same way. I’ve done a lot of different things now, and there’s been ups and downs all the way through, and I’ve been very lucky and had a really great time. But I still get that. What I always loved about acting—what some people don’t love about it—is the unknown. The fact that tomorrow I get the Hemingway script, and I’ve never read a Hemingway book in my life. Or a call from Phil Kaufman—I adore The Right Stuff, I adore The Unbearable Lightness of Being—and I think, "Oh, he’s such a special director." He sends me this great script, and a year later I’ve read everything Hemingway’s done. Just set alight. That just comes, one phone call, one day. [snaps his fingers] I consume so much about Hemingway, I do everything everywhere he lived in Paris, I go to Cuba and go and look at his house there.** **It’s the beauty of the unexpected—even if it’s just a great script—that could come tomorrow.
Do you have any fear?
Every time I do a job, yeah.
Sometimes fear is a motivator; sometimes it freezes you. Sometimes I feel like I got to where I am because I’m always scared of failing. And then there’s another part of me that freezes because I’m scared of failing. It’s always battling between the two.
There’s a little period in my career where I kind of lost sight of it a little bit. Acting, like a lot of things in life, is so much about appetite—wanting to do it, feeling you can do it, feeling like you’ve got something to do. An appetite, a hunger for it. You start making choices based on a career, a "career move"—I don’t even know what that is—thinking that’s the right thing to do or whatever. I don’t function very well if I just respond to the material goal. If I have the appetite, it doesn’t matter how the whole thing pans out. Good, bad, it’s the appetite that carries you through it. The best career move is to be good, and the best way to be good is to be hungry for it, to want to do it. And I think that that’s the most important thing. So even though... Again, I take the Hemingway thing, because it was such a leap. I don’t look like him, I don’t, you know... But it was a great script, Phil was such a great guy, and you go, "Right, let’s take it on."
Do you think you’ve become the man you wanted to be?
I wanted to be? No. I don’t aspire to be anything.
But when you were 18, 19, did you ever have a vision of the man you wanted to be, and did you become that?
Not really. But what I’ve done is beyond my wildest. Unbelievable. I’m still grateful every day.
Do your daughters understand what you do?
Yeah. It’s been funny watching them grow up, because for a while they really didn’t. "Why is that man talking to you? What do you mean you don’t know them?" There was a little confusion. And then just seeing them as they grow... And still, there’s a lot of my stuff I won’t let them see. I’m sure they’re sneakily watching it. Like, I don’t want them to see _Closer. _But some of their friends at school have. They’re gonna have to go find it. But they do understand what it is I do. Certainly one of them is thinking about doing it, and all I care is that she does it for the right reasons.
How do you guide her toward that?
Make sure she understands that the work is everything. The frills and everything that comes with it, and all the other stuff you deal with—but ultimately it’s about the work. That’s the most important thing. That’s what will carry you through.
Is there any health advice that changed your life?
The best thing I did for myself was give up smoking.
When did you do that?
When my first daughter was born.
Was it just cold turkey?
Kind of. It was cold turkey, and I stopped smoking in the apartment we were in when Sarah-Jane got pregnant, so I could only smoke outside, and I said, "When she’s born, I’m stopping." People were giving me the look, and I was like, "No, you’ve just got to want to do it, and I’m going to stop." And the day my daughter was born, I stopped. And then I was doing the play Closer at the National. And in the play, that character was struggling giving up smoking. And halfway through, Patrick, who directed the regional production, said, "We’ve got to deal with this smoking thing." And I said, "Well, I’ll just smoke herbals, obviously." He said, "You can’t. It’s a small theater at the National. These things smell, you know, really pungent. You’ve got to smoke." "Patrick, I’ve given up. I can’t smoke!" And this is something about me, which is a little weird: I allowed myself—because the play was in rep, with other plays—every time I was doing the play, the minute I crossed the stage door, I could smoke. Straight to the cigarette machine, puff away in the dressing room. I allowed myself. And then, on the down days, I didn’t allow myself, so I’d just be tortured. But that’s the deal I did with myself: I can only smoke when it’s work. And the last night of that play was the last time I smoked a cigarette.
When were you most ambitious?
[long pause] I’m taking my time because I’m trying to think if I really am ambitious. It’s funny, when I was younger, it was something I didn’t like seeing in other people—naked ambition, when somebody is really pushing hard to get to where they want to be. I don’t know why. I was always... I’m competitive with myself, but I’ve always thought of ambition like, _I’ve got to get them. Fuck! _But it might not be that. You can look at it... That’s the way I look at that word: if you’re stepping on anything to get there. And I’ve never been comfortable with that as an idea. I’ve always challenged myself, but not at the cost of everything around me. I wanted to become an actor; I was very passionate about that. I just wanted to do it. But I wasn’t like, "I want to become a film star." I just wanted to do it. I’ve been very passionate. When I was younger, it was really important to me. I really wanted to do it. But I’ve never really felt like I wanted to use that word for it: ambition.
Do you have any physical scars?
Nose, head.
Your nose was broken?
Yeah, very badly.
How’d that happen?
Pretty pathetically. Up a tree, 10 or 11. Going along this branch, so springy that by the time you get to the end, your feet just about touch the ground. If you flick your feet, you bounce up and down. That was the game. Up the tree, waiting for my go. I go, "Come on, come on, it’s my go!" The guy: "Okay." _[makes snapping sound] Boof! _Splattered! And the head one, similarly, running around my school, what was like an empty-almost pool. If you can imagine an empty swimming pool, that kind of thing. Running around an empty swimming pool, missed the corner, split my head open.
How old were you then?
It happened about the same time, probably. A year or two after the nose. Blood just pouring. Couldn’t see. Went to the hospital to get stitched up.
Is there something on your neck?
Yeah, born with a hole in my neck. They waited a little while, until I was about 2, and then stitched it up. They had to, because it was going to stretch. They couldn’t properly sew it up until—
Did it affect you in any way?
No, it didn’t stop me from doing anything. It was just a hole in my neck! [laughs]
Doesn’t everyone have one of these? [laughs]
What’s the big deal? I have a hole in my neck._ [laughs]_
As you get older, does love change?
If anything, it probably gets stronger, especially with kids.
And what about sex?
[laughs] It gets better as well.
Is there anything you would tell the 20-year-old version of yourself?
No, because I lucked out. The idea of having the life that I have—at that age, it was crazy. It was unimaginable to me. And I got a series of incredibly lucky breaks at different times. I feel like I’ve been very, very fortunate and very lucky. So when I look back, if I played something differently, it might not have gone the way it did. So I feel blessed. I don’t feel like going back and changing anything.
Is there a period of your life that you found very stressful?
There was a time that things really opened up for me, where I got a little bit of rhythm with work, and I did a few things back-to-back, and I got tired. Really tired.
When was that?
There were three films that I did that were literally stacked up. I left one to go onto the other, and opportunities were opening up for me—and by the last one, I was absolutely exhausted. And also, I wasn’t functioning well. I hadn’t had proper time to prepare. And for the first time, for the first-ever time, I didn’t want to be at work. It was scary. Because I’ve always loved it, and suddenly there was this time of "Shit, I’d prefer not to be going. I’d prefer to just stay home." And it was tiredness; it was exhaustion. And I took lessons from that, and I learned and I changed. I realized that I had to dictate the rhythm, that I don’t just go dun-dun-dun... I’ll function better if I have time to prepare, I know that, but also I have to say no. I can’t do a big job, a big job stacked up. I don’t function well like that. I also, you know, it’s also important, regarding the family, to—if you spend a long time away—to put that [time] back in afterwards. Don’t go there, then there, then there. That’s no good—in every way. So it was really about learning to say no. So that if somebody says, "We want to go, we want to go then, straight in it"—I have to go, "Well, okay, then, I can’t." And I think, at this point, I still hadn’t learned that I have to dictate the rhythm. It [used to be], "It’s okay if they overlap. Okay, I’ll just go straight to it." Learning to dictate the rhythm is really important.
I love hearing that, because that’s not just about being an actor—that’s applicable to any man’s life.
But it takes balls to do that, because if you’re—if there’s a job or a part you really want, it takes balls to say, "Even so, if it’s not right in terms of the rhythm..."
That’s wisdom. Guys getting to that point where they know that saying no is stronger than saying yes. So I rewatched _Croupier, _and there’s a great line of dialogue which I would hazard to suggest—
"Hang on tightly, let go lightly"?
Do you like that line?
I do like that line, yeah.
Is that your motto?
It’s not particularly my motto, but I do like that line.
Do you have a motto?
Not really, no. It was an important film for me, that film.
Tell me why.
Because it helped put me up in America. The whole film thing, prior to that, I was doing small films, theater, TV. But that was the beginning of opening up to movies, opening up to America. It was a tiny film that they didn’t particularly like when they saw it, and it was down to somebody who became a good friend, a guy called Mike Kaplan, who championed it in America. He came from a world of marketing—he promoted a lot of Altman’s films and Kubrick’s films—and he just started screening it in America, saying, "There’s this really cool little British film." And it’s how I got _Gosford Park, _because he showed it to Altman—who came to me about that—and then got a release for it, a very small, modest release, but it got good reviews. And he individually kept it alive for months and months and months and bought different ads, papers, and turned it into this cult. It was always very modest, but it changed my career, his passion for that film.
That line from the film—"The world turned round him, leaving him miraculously untouched." There’s a stillness about you. It was almost a prescient line, I thought. I see that also in your performances. That’s very powerful, that stillness.
It makes me think of, when I was younger and first started acting, I always gathered strength from the idea that if you’re really honest in your work as an actor, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. They can judge you, they don’t like your tone, they don’t like the positioning of it—but there’s a huge amount of strength to be got from being truthful to whatever it is you’re really doing as an actor. To be truthful to it. And that carried me through a lot when younger, in terms of "I’ll approach it, I’ll be as honest as I can, I’ll give myself to it and be as truthful as I can." There’s a real strength in that, and it’s still something, oddly, that I will still occasionally go back to, when I’m in confusion about something or whatever. Just strip away the machinations of it, the structuring of the thing, and just get to the essence of it. And that’s a strong place to be. I don’t know why I thought of that, but I did.
You’re making me think of things. So, _Closer, _which is Mike Nichols directing—
Genius.
What did you learn from him?
Ah, I could just sit in a room with that guy...and we did. We rehearsed for two weeks, and it was basically him drinking—and he’s the smartest. I learned so much from him. He’s often called one of the greatest actor directors. And the most common thing you hear him say in the rehearsal room—the first few days I’m listening to him, and he’s so brilliant, I can tell how smart he is. You’d offer something up exactly, and he—and I’m a really big believer in this—he does what the best actor directors do, which is he makes an actor feel they can do anything. He makes you feel good. Now, I’ve come across flavors of it, and I’ve heard stories of very strong things, where some people think to put an actor under pressure is a good thing. You construct a situation where you get interesting acting out of them by squeezing them in a particular way. I don’t agree with that at all. Acting is all about confidence and believing you can do it. And he just puts you in a place where you think you can do anything. And he’s so smart, and you so want to impress him because he is such a smart human being. So everyone’s bringing their game, and he’s just fantastic. And what a career! He gave me some early Nichols and May, which I hadn’t... Prior to working with him, I had never seen any Nichols and May. You know how much that holds up, that stuff? It’s still so smart. And it was like a treat, I was giving it out to everybody, saying, "You’ve got to check this out." And you look at his career, from that to the films he’s directed. I thought _Angels in America _was the best ensemble acting I’ve seen, maybe ever. I thought it was brilliant. So I think he’s special.
Is there advice that anyone ever gave you that made a difference?
No. I’ve got some pretty shockingly bad advice.
What’s some of the bad advice?
"Just remember, Clive, it’s all about likability." [laughs]
Who said that? You don’t have to name names.
It was a prospective manager in L.A. "Acting is all about likability."
Where were you in your career at that point?
Not far out of drama school.
Did you go with that person?
No.
What was it like working with Soderbergh on The Knick? Did you learn anything from him?
We’re going back. We’re doing another ten [episodes].
Yeah, but did you learn anything?
I don’t think I’ve come across anyone who’s on top of all facets, all aspects of making a movie like... There’s no one. The guy, I don’t know how he does it. He lights, he operates, he edits.
He retires.
[laughs] We shot_ The Knick_ as a ten-hour movie, and I really just don’t know how he holds it all in his head. He said to me, "I don’t want to do it episodically." And I thought, "That’s cool, you shoot every film in that sequence, it’s not a big thing." And once we started, I realized—
You shot it out of sequence?
Yeah. We shot it like a movie. I needed... I stole it from him, a big white board on the wall with episodes and scenes, just to get a visual graph. We’d go to my house in the story and shoot everything from one to ten.
So in the opium den, that’s like—
All over, two days. My home—all over, two days. The lot from ten, from cracking up, from the beginning—
Wow.
Yeah. And it makes the most sense logistically, but—
So how long were you shooting, then?
Seventy-three days, for ten hours. Anything between eight or nine pages to thirteen a day.
What’s the most you’ve ever shot in a day?
I’d say thirteen or fourteen.
Do you think guys all, somewhere and in different degrees, all harbor an impulse to just blow up their lives—walk away when the compartmentalization fails?
I’m sure that they do. Men, women, all of us. I think there is that potential, but it’s various degrees, isn’t it? Some people, it’s much more pronounced. They’re constantly doing it.
It’s a tension some people have. Which is why I think that character is such a great character.
In The Knick?
Yeah. It’s all about secret selves. I mean, the metaphors are always so rich, because it’s about cutting people up and the ends all closed up.
Again, reading that first one, it was such a challenging guy. To be taking the lead in that series who behaves like that. He’s not someone who takes them by the hand and leads: "Come into 1900 and let me show you the world of medicine." It’s confrontational, it’s difficult, it’s complex. He’s not likable.
What do you think happens to us after we die?
Nothing.
Nothing? End of story?
Yeah. I think we’re struggling to make sense of something that never really does make sense, is my theory. Anything post–this life is a desperate attempt to make sense of something that doesn’t really make sense. Life is scarily random, and that’s what I believe. I believe we shape all these things to make us feel a bit better about it. I don’t shape anything. I think when it ends, it ends. When I think about it, I think the reverberations of us as people carry on through other people.
Michael Hainey (@michaelhainey) _is GQ’s deputy editor and the author of the memoir _After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story.