The Man Behind His Lines

What Is Actor Clive Owen Really Like? Step Inside.

NEW YORK -- The publicity machine helping actor Clive Owen promote his new film "Derailed" did him no favor by dispatching him to this dowdy hotel suite in midtown Manhattan, where he will sit for an interview. So much of this promo business is about image, glamour and a faux intimacy extruded from a one-hour encounter. Decorated in dull shades of gold and green, it must surely be the dreariest room in all the "luxury" hotels in all of Manhattan.

The room is weirdly underfurnished, and one can't help but scan the carpeting looking for the telltale hyperpigmentation that indicates a dresser or a sidebar has been surreptitiously removed. A sofa and an armchair are positioned in a conversational cluster. In between them sits a coffee table decorated with tiny orchids in a small square pot -- so bleak, so FTD -- and a large pumpkin-shaped cookie wrapped in cellophane. It is Halloween weekend, but still, this last flourish is so strangely incongruous with everything else in the room that it is inspected for bite marks, as it looks like something left behind by the previous occupant.

It is into this woebegone atmosphere that Owen gamely walks.

The 41-year-old British actor wears a black Giorgio Armani suit that was selected, he says, without any aid. Owen is tall -- over six feet -- dark-haired and handsome. He is not a pretty boy in that glossy (but creepy) Hollywood way. He is not one of those wee gentlemen with an extra large head, Chiclet teeth, a spray-on tan and clothes that look as though they've been self-consciously rumpled by a stylist on retainer. Owen is attractive in a noticeable, but not distracting, way. One can imagine spotting him at a friend's party and thinking, "Wow, that guy is really good-looking." And then heading off to the bar.

If this were a fan magazine, the next paragraph would exclaim how Owen lit up this dismal room upon his arrival. But he did not! Instead, he's just a handsome man with a firm handshake who'd like some tea before he begins talking about his day job.

What is Clive Owen like? This question is raised upfront because he is one of those actors who are the subject of Internet message boards headlined: "Is Clive a nice guy?" From what can be discerned over the course of one conversation, he seems to be a pleasant man with a professional attitude about his press duties. One suspects that he can be charming, but he does not go about it in the manner of a golden retriever seeking approval.

Owen stars in "Derailed" alongside Jennifer Aniston, whose recent divorce from actor Brad Pitt had pop culture crazies taking sides as if they had a personal stake in the size of her settlement. (So what if Brad is an amateur architect -- Jennifer deserves the house!)

In the allotted time, Owen was thoughtful in discussing the film, described Aniston in pleasant terms and refrained from doing anything weirdly narcissistic, embarrassing or obnoxious that could be detailed herein and then attributed by him at a later date to a gross media exaggeration. He did not cry. He occasionally laughed.

In the film, the first from Miramax founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein since their split from Disney, Owen plays married advertising executive Charles Schine. His marriage has gone stagnant, in part because he and his wife have focused all their emotional energy on their young daughter, who is chronically ill.

Aniston plays Lucinda Harris, a fellow Chicago commuter, also married, who Schine meets on the train. She is the mysterious woman in the power clothes -- her hair brushed into a French twist and her long legs in black nylons and stilettos calling out to every sucker in gray-flannel Brooks Brothers. A good Samaritan gesture on her part -- she pays Schine's fare when he forgets to bring cash for the train -- leads to a conversation, to drinks, a kiss and finally a cheap hotel room. A robber interrupts before the consummation of their affair and in that moment, the movie transforms from a tale of infidelity into a thriller dominated by thugs, blackmail and embezzlement.

Owen plays the family man who makes a deadly mistake. He is the dupe for whom bad judgment is like a nervous tic -- the guy who causes the audience to yell, "Don't open the door!"

"I was very keen on playing a victim," Owen says. "In every scene, you play a character under an incredible amount of stress." It is a role that requires a different kind of energy -- more controlled, more stifled -- than a character who's moving the story forward. And it is a long way from the personality of Larry, the sex-addicted, brutish doctor Owen played in "Closer" (for which he won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination). Schine spends much of his time speaking furtively into a cell phone, his brow furrowed, and his face -- once so animated with naughty, adolescent lust -- turned into a mask of regret.