Over the past three years, Owen has kept busy, even if the resulting films - Trust, Killer Elite and Intruders - haven't made big impressions. That may change with Shadow Dancer, a taut, absorbing espionage thriller from director James Marsh set during a spike in IRA violence in the early 1990s.
Well-received when it premiered at Sundance in January, Shadow Dancer gives Owen his best role since Children of Men, as a mid-level MI5 agent assigned with recruiting Andrea Riseborough's doughty Irish nationalist into spying on her own family. The 47-year-old actor responds in turn with a typically understated but impeccable performance.
One imagines that part of the appeal must have been the fact that Mac is not the conventional ballistics-happy action-hero you'd expect him to play. Is that something he wanted to steer clear of after 2007's Shoot 'Em Up and The International? "It's never that conscious," insists Owen in his trademark baritone rumble. "I never, ever go, 'I don't want to do this genre now, I want to do this one.' I never make decisions like that. It's a straight response to a piece of material and who's directing it, and I responded to Shadow Dancer. I loved how tight the script was; I loved the premise. And James was so intelligent about the material and had such a strong angle on the way he wanted to do it."
But even though 14 years have passed since the historic Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland's peace is still fragile, its recent history a sore topic for both sides. It's subject matter that many British actors might avoid for fear of stirring up unwanted reproach. Owen has first-hand experience of that: after playing the incestuous brother in Stephen Poliakoff's Close My Eyes (1991), he struggled to be cast in anything for two years. But gritty, challenging projects like Shadow Dancer are exactly what this late arrival to fame (he was 34 when he broke through with Croupier) needs right now to remind big-time film-makers that, at his best, he's an indelibly seductive presence who produces chemistry with every actress he shares the screen with.
A working-class kid from Coventry who impressively gate-crashed Rada when he was 20, the actor has strong recollections of living through Shadow Dancer's era, when the pernicious threat of IRA violence was "always in the air". "I grew up with it being part of our lives and every night hearing some report on the news about the troubles," says Owen, who ended up doing a play in Belfast when tensions were at their peak. He was only in the city for a week but describes the experience as "rough".
"It was a war zone. I remember going out in the evenings and it was disconcerting what was happening on the streets. They'd do these drills where the vans pull up and the soldiers all jump out and hit their positions and the first time I saw that, I seriously thought, 'I'm in the middle of a situation'."
There's a brilliantly chilling exchange in Shadow Dancer where Gillian Anderson, playing his frosty superior, spits at him, "Feeling left out, Mac?" It's likely to be the moment Owen wins over an audience's sympathies, although the jovial star delivers his own interpretation of the line's resonance: "It's because James had spent the whole shoot in a huddle with Andrea and then turned to me and went, 'Feeling left out, Clive?"' Owen unleashes his thundering laugh, although there's surely some truth in his statement: Riseborough's role is the tougher of the two so it's easy to fathom the actress consuming Marsh's attentions. Owen adds hastily, "Andrea is fantastic in the film. I think it's a really great performance."
He hopes that lingering sensitivities won't affect how Shadow Dancer is received, or scare people away. He's immensely proud of the film, praising Marsh - who's known for the superb documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim - for his "sensitive, delicate, intelligent handling - it's not crass, it's not big obvious sweeping statements". He might even let his two daughters with Sarah-Jane Fenton, who he married in 1995, watch the film, although certain titles are still off-limits.
"I forget my eldest [Hannah] is now 15!" he marvels. "When I tell her, 'You're not watching that', she goes, 'I'm 15, I don't need your permission.' The sad thing is that kids at Eve's school have seen films that I'm in that I won't let her watch. Some of her friends have seen Closer and discuss it with her and I have to say, 'Sweetheart, you're not seeing it!"'
If he could reboot his life, Owen says he'd choose to be a sportsman rather than an actor. "A footballer or a tennis player," he vouches. "But only if I could be a really good one. I wouldn't want to be an average one."
Who: Clive Owen
What: Shadow Dancer
When: Screening now
- Independent
