Posted by: Sheila Roberts
Movies Online recently sat down with actor Clive Owen at the Los Angeles Press Day to promote his latest film, "Children of Men” directed by Alfonso Cuaron from his screenplay adaptation of mystery writer P.D. James’ somewhat downbeat novel.
The film set in Great Britain envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect. The world’s youngest citizen has just died at age 18, and humankind is facing its own extinction. The film follows disillusioned bureaucrat Theo (Clive Owen) as he becomes an unlikely champion of Earth’s survival. When the planet’s last hope is threatened, this reluctant activist must face his own demons and protect the lone pregnant woman from certain peril. The film also stars Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Clare-Hope Ashitey.
Owen is well known for starring in a brilliant and diverse array of films that range from Mike Hodges’ sleeper hit "Croupier” that had critics comparing him to the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and Sean Connery to Robert Altman’s star-studded "Gosford Park” to Robert Rodriguez’s visually bold and inventive "Sin City.” In 2005, Owen won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Larry in "Closer,” directed by Mike Nichols. The film also starred Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman. Owen was seen last fall in "Derailed,” opposite Jennifer Aniston, and went on to star in Spike Lee’s "Inside Man,” opposite Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. His upcoming projects include the action film "Shoot ‘Em Up” and "The Golden Age” – a follow-up to the 1998 film "Elizabeth” in which Clive plays Sir Walter Raleigh and a rumored reprisal of his role as Dwight in "Sin City 2.”
Clive Owen is a fabulous actor and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about making "Children of Men” and what it was like working with visionary director Alfonso Cuaron and legendary actor Michael Caine:
Q: Clive, you’ve been a part of several films with really extraordinary technical processes. The green screen of Sin City and the single takes of this. How aware are you of that process when you’re doing these movies?
CO: Yeah, hugely aware. I mean it’s one of the elements of making movies that I actually really enjoy. I love the collaboration of doing shots like those in Children of Men because there’s something about filmmaking that, you know, if it was just about putting great directors, great scripts, and great actors together and you’re guaranteed a great film, that’s one thing, but that isn’t the case. There aren’t any rules and there’s something sort of elusive that’s out of any individual’s control that makes a film work or not work and when you’re doing one of those hugely ambitious long sequences of one shot, it’s a genuine collaboration.
It’s everybody pulling together to try and make something happen and the responsibility is a collective one. And the strongest memory from the movie was how much, how closely I had to work with the [camera] operator on those sequences because we would rehearse for a very, very long time and it was very painstaking and specific, but then when we come to shoot it, it has to feel like we’re catching it on the run. You’ve got to feel like you’re in the thick of it.
And it’s all about pacing. If you hold a beat a bit too long, it will suddenly feel a bit manipulative like he’s held there so we see the tank just over his right shoulder so we work very, very specifically about what we want to see and what we want to catch. And then when we go for it, we’ve got to shape that up and keep an energy that is much looser than that. And they’re very adrenalized those sequences because there’s huge resets. It’s like, you know, some of those big ones are four, five-hour resets to try and go again for a take like that. So everybody is very adrenalized gearing up to go in for one of those takes and there’s something just a bit magical. I mean I think that technically some of this film is pretty staggering. The operator…most of the film is hand held and the operator did a really incredible job, I think.
Q: When you were doing those long single takes, was the direction from Alfonso to just kind of keep going in case you stumbled or something happened?
CO: Not specifically, no. Somebody’s there to abort if something early on goes wrong. There’s no point in going on and carrying on and blowing up the side of that building if very early on there’s something that is obviously amiss. No, it was really about rehearsing very, very thoroughly and then it was very cool of Alfonso because he then – sort of the pacing and everything – he then hands the trust over to George and I that we’re going to sort of do that thing.
And the take… one of the takes of the big sequence at the end going through the thing, there was a unanimous sense at the end of that one that that was the one. Alfonso was then very worried because the blood spattered on the camera and Chivo (3:38 ??) and Emmanuel Lubezki said, ‘But that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant.’ But collectively at the end of that take, there was a sense – George, I, everybody – like that was it, we nailed that one. And Alfonso decided in the end we’re going with it because it worked. That was the best take.
Q: Do you remember which take that was?
CO: Yeah. Yup. Which number it was?
Q: Which number it was.
CO: I think on that sequence it was about the third one.
Q: Having Clare as a complete newcomer to this, what was it that you talked to her about getting ready for the process of working with Alfonso and working with such a veteran cast of actors and was there something specifically that she came to you about and asked you?
CO: No. You know, she’s a very talented and lovely actress and it’s just really about making sure that she feels comfortable in that environment. She hasn’t done that many films and it’s a big film and it’s an ambitious film and it was just really… You don’t have to talk about it, but it’s just everybody’s very aware of making her feel confident and comfortable.
I mean you know it’s a given that actors do their best work when they’re confident. If the confidence goes, the work’s not going to be as good so you’re just constantly trying to create an environment where people feel comfortable and confident to do their thing. But she was lovely to work with. It was great casting. You know, I think Alfonso is a very sort of pure visionary director and he just cast the best person for the part.
Q: Could you describe these feelings of working with Alfonso and what qualities he brings as a director? What’s unique?
CO: I was and now am an even bigger, huge fan of Alfonso’s. He’s very, very high on my ‘directors I’d love to work with’ list and even some of his films that were maybe not as commercially successful I think are very special. He’s a highly original, talented … huge talent. And when he first sent me the script, I wasn’t sure about the part. I didn’t quite know why he wanted me to do it. It’s a highly unusual lead part. If you look at that character, he’s in every scene but it’s very unusual traits that he’s got. It’s not the kind of part where you can sort of do your thing as an actor in a way.
It’s about sacrificing yourself to Alfonso’s vision and not getting in the way of it which seems to me more important than doing any acting. But I went and I met him and I talked to him and I found him hugely exciting and he told me his whole vision of the film and his take on the movie and then I came on board and the first thing he said is, ‘This is now the bit I love. I love working with actors. I love the collaboration of that. We’re going to do this movie together and he was very true to his word. I signed on well in advance of the movie. I was shooting other stuff but we kept in constant contact. I then, as soon as I got a break, went and spent a few weeks with him in New York just holed up in a hotel room talking about the movie, talking about Theo. The collaboration continued throughout.
It was a genuine, really brilliant collaboration through the whole movie. He kept me completely in the loop in all the post production. He sent me various cuts and edits and there was endless conversations and still now as we’re taking the film out there and sort of putting it out there, it still feels like that. So it’s been a very, very special collaboration and I do genuinely think he’s a very rare and unique talent. The thing about his movies is they are whole visions. They’re … He doesn’t do that thing of pandering to what he thinks the commercial market wants. He makes his movies. He has a very singular vision and he goes out there and does that. I think he’s very special.
Q: Did you know the P.D. James novel before you came into this? And do you think there is a possibility for kind of a totalitarian society which the book and film envisage could happen in the U.K. down the road?
CO: I didn’t know the book and I read it afterwards. It’s obviously like whenever you do an adaptation of a book, that was the starting [point] and the huge inspiration for the movie but then Alfonso had a lot of other things he wanted to discuss. Alfonso, I think, with this movie has been very clever.
He’s actually using a film set 30 years in the future as an excuse to talk about present worries, concerns, and fears that we all have. It’s an incredibly relevant vision of the future because he’s really looking ahead and saying ‘if we’re not careful, this is where things could be going.’ And I don’t think the film is that futuristic. If you look at the opening scene, my character walks into a café, walks outside, and a bomb goes off. The beginning of the movie. That’s the world we’re in. That’s not futuristic, you know. That’s incredibly relevant. And I think it’s not that … it isn’t that farfetched. There are endless images in this movie that we’ve seen that we are sort of already familiar with and he’s obviously taken it further than the real thing but I just don’t think it’s…it’s not a fantasy.
Q: Can you tell me how the scene of the child’s birth was done? Did you actually have a baby there or was it a doll?
CO: There were a number of sequences in this where Alfonso was hugely ambitious. You know, we’ve talked about the long one-shot deals. Now when you’re rehearsing and setting one of those up all day long and the light goes and you haven’t turned the camera over and you’ve got to come back and carry on tomorrow, you can imagine the phone calls that fly around that evening with the studio going, ‘What is he doing? We haven’t turned over?’
And he had that sort of a tack on certain sequences and the child birth was one of those because we get there and he says, ‘I want to do it in one -- the whole sequence -- from the minute we come into that room to the baby being born.’ His sort of objective about this movie is to keep trying to viscerally put you in the action and the best way of doing that is to keep it as much real time as possible and to not cut away and not do this sort of manipulative, single, single, where you feel you know the sort of territory you’re in – the movie territory. He wanted to put you into the thick of it so that scene was about just trying to viscerally connect with the audience.
That was the thing. Now I was present at the birth of both of my two children so I had those things to draw on. I was in the thick of it both times and I remember feeling a bit like Theo does in the movie. The strongest thing that I remember from that day was towards the end of the shoot it was a very, very long day and we went well into the evening because it was only one take and we had to make sure we had it. And Alfonso goes, ‘We’ve got to just try one more.’ And we would just keep going and keep going and we went, you know, the day turned into a night shoot as well.
Q: So was that a doll or a baby?
CO: No, there was an animatronic baby and some CGI stuff was done afterwards. But again it was…you’ve got all the camera work to consider, you’ve got the pacing of the scene because ultimately… It’s very special when a director gives actors the responsibility of a scene of that length because we have to pace it in some way. We are dictating the pace, we have to keep the scene alive and it puts a lot of responsibility on the actors.
But also technically it was very demanding for the operator again because the whole movement of the camera at the very end when the baby arrives it’s incredibly specific where that camera has to settle and sit so again it was one of those genuine collaborations where everybody was coming together and trying to achieve something pretty extraordinary.
Q: I saw you as what I would call almost a reluctant hero, your character, an average man improbably thrown into an extraordinary situation. One of the things that struck me, I want to ask you, being barefoot. I mean it was just that whole sense of immediacy. Were you really barefoot most of that time running?
CO: For some of it. I mean it’s a highly unusual lead character for a movie of this size really because the first half of the movie the guy doesn’t even want to be there. The guy’s dragged into the movie. He’s very reluctant. It’s very unusual to play a lead character that is apathetic, cynical, depressed, drunk, sad really, overwhelming sadness was the thing. Now they are unusual traits. That’s not usually the sort of lead character of a movie and eventually he does become engaged. It’s about the last … Theo sort of embodies the loss of hope.
There’s a hopelessness about him. He’s given up. He’s given up. There is no point to anything. But through the movie he does become engaged again. Now the thing about the feet. People sort of crack jokes about the flip flops and things but it’s actually a real stroke of genius because there’s a point in the movie later on where suddenly Theo is becoming active. He’s become engaged again and he’s running around trying to save this girl which in turn could save the world and Alfonso, who has a huge sort of aversion to sentimentality, to stop any notion of we’ve seen this cliché where our guy’s gonna become active and do it, he put me in flip flops. And that’s never going to become the cliché action guy. It’s like it’s not going to happen. So that was a very deliberate thing on his part and then the thing just developed – the foot fetish developed throughout the movie. [laughs]
Q: I have two questions. One about working with Michael Caine. Those scenes are just amazing. He seemed almost like the heart of the movie. And also could you talk a little bit about shooting the film after I believe the bombs had gone off in London and what the feeling was and maybe with people even standing around watching you.
CO: Well Michael Caine is just a … You know, he’s just a legend. He’s been at the top as long as I’ve been around and there’s a reason because he’s just a fantastic and very special talent and we had a very strong connection because we’ve both done a couple films with Mike Hodges. He did the original Get Carter which was an important film in Michael’s career and Croupier was a very important film in my career and so we had that strong connection. And the most important thing in those scenes was that that’s the one place where Theo relaxes.
The rest of the time he’s a defeated, very sad person. But then there’s a light, there’s a warmth, there’s a humanity about their relationship so we just had to look like we were really comfortable and he’s my best friend. He’s the guy that, you know… So that’s what we had to nail in just those few scenes we had. And he was a delight to work with. The bombing scene, the scene at the beginning of the movie where the bomb goes off, was the worst day’s filming. It was really upsetting for everybody because it was close after the bombings and I was amazed we actually got permission because it was a big explosion and we were right in the center of London and it was just incredibly eerie and awful and it’s very poignant.
I think it’s a very incredibly sort of poignant and profound opening to the movie to have that happen and set the tone and say ‘This is the world we live in. This is 30 years’ time and this is the world we live in.’ Because you know I’ve got two young girls and the fear and the trepidation about the future is that this feeling of fragility and fear of these things happening … you’re bringing kids into the world and this might just become part of their lives. That’s just what they deal with and that’s an awful and worrying idea really.
Q: Considering Alfonso’s ambition, was there ever a moment where you were concerned with the picture or starting to think ‘Is this going to work?’
CO: Personally, yes. With what I was doing, yes, because as I said before, he’s not a dynamic lead character and you’re holding a film. I’m in every single scene in the movie. When you’re holding a film of this sort of scale and size and you are playing sort of sad and apathetic and the way you pitch that, you worry if it’s holding. You worry. It’s not like I can be proactive and take the character in the film and take people through the movie. That isn’t the kind of character and I knew… my instinct from the very, very beginning was that thing I said is that I didn’t want to get in the way of his vision.
It wasn’t about doing good acting in this movie. It was about…he thinks very wide, Alfonso. He’s about environment. He puts characters in environments. He doesn’t… if you notice, there are very few close-ups in the movie. There are very few times where he goes in on something, and there’s a reason when he does. But most of the film is done wide. There’s an awful lot sort of just following me and you worry that as an actor that it’s holding because you can’t do the strong things because that’s not what’s required. It’s something else. It’s about I felt I just wanted to serve his vision and not get in the way of it and bring something to it, but you don’t know where that’s pitching.
You don’t know if you’re playing somebody who’s reluctantly dragged through the first part of the movie, you don’t know if the audience is going to go, ‘Why should we even be going with this guy because he doesn’t want to go on the journey?’ So there were times certainly where I was involved, but he… you know, for me, the opportunities I’ve been getting in the last few years are hugely appreciated and the opportunity to work with him was a really great one and I think the film is one of those that later on in my career when I look back it will be one that I am very particularly proud of, I think.
Q: Are you looking forward to Sin City 2 and playing Dwight again?
CO: I honestly don’t know what’s happening there because everybody’s talked about it. It’s been announced a few times that it’s happening but I have no idea what’s happening there. I mean I don’t know when they’re going to do it, who’s doing it. I have no idea.
Q: Well the story they’re doing is A Dame to Kill For which is before The Big Fat Kill. Are you familiar with that?
CO: Oh, I know that but it’s just that’s been talked about and it’s floating out there as an idea but no one has ever talked to me about it.
Q: Well that does come from Robert so that is the story.
CO: [laughs] No, he told me that that’s what he’s doing but I have no idea when or what’s happening with it.
Q: I heard you might have seen a rough cut of Shoot ‘Em Up.
CO: [laughs] News travels fast. Yesterday.
Q: I was wondering what you thought of the version you saw?
CO: I think it’s going to be a pretty wild, highly original, crazy ride of a movie.
Q: What did you hear from Mexico?
CO: I’m actually going to Mexico next week so I’ll be out of town even more. We’re going to open the film there next week. I don’t know what I learned about Mexico but I adore working with Alfonso. I know all those guys. They’re hugely talented like Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro. They’re huge talent and I love the way they support each other as well. They were all at the screening last night and I think it’s a very healthy thing they do.
Q: Can I just ask quickly about Casino Royale? Now that that’s been put to rest, what are your feelings on it?
CO: I can’t wait to see it. I’m really looking forward to seeing it and I think he looks great in it so… I haven’t seen it but I’m going to see it soon.
Q: Are you happy not to be asked about Bond anymore?
CO: I’m very happy in my flip flops in this one.
"Children of Men” opens on Christmas Day. Be sure and read Sheila's
Children of Men Review. To give you a great taste of this movie we have 3 minutes worth of clips for the film below for you.. Watch them and see why we are so excited about this film. Last and certainly not least we are giving away free copies of the poster to readers
Win Children of Men Posters
