Clive Owen has by no means been considering being comfy.
From Spike Lee’s Inside Man and Alfonso Cuarón’s Kids of Males to Robert Altman’s Gosford Park and Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick, the actor has labored with a variety of filmmakers throughout an expanse of tasks over each movie, tv and the stage.
“I like to decide on issues that scare me slightly bit, one thing that I haven’t achieved earlier than. While you have a look at all the things I’ve achieved, it’s a really combined bag,” says Owen.
When it got here to the Mike Nichols movie Nearer, it was one of many few situations the place Owen was keen to retread some identified territory. He had starred within the first staging of the Patrick Marber play in regards to the intertwining lives of two {couples} on the Royal Theater Firm and, lower than a decade later, he acquired phrase that Nichols wish to forged him in a movie adaptation, however in a completely totally different function. The movie, which starred Julia Roberts, Jude Legislation, and Natalie Portman, earned Owen an Oscar nomination.
Owen and his diversified profession will probably be feted on the 58th version of the Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Competition within the Czech Republic, the place Nearer will display. Forward of the fest, Owen talked the The Hollywood Reporter in regards to the movie, his on-set routines and what’s subsequent for him.
I used to be studying in our Drama Actors Roundtable that you simply eat the identical factor on set and sleep each lunchtime. How lengthy did it take you to develop your routine?
I realized some huge classes fairly early on. I keep in mind the very, very first movie I did manner again within the day, the primary ever present. And it was a movie known as Vroom that Beeban Kidron directed. I used to be very excited and I used to be speaking rather a lot and she or he got here as much as me after a few weeks and she or he mentioned, “You want to save your vitality, we nonetheless acquired a technique to go.” That basically stayed with me, the concept that in filmmaking, particularly when you’re doing an extended job, you actually should tempo your self. It’s about self-discipline, and it comes right down to a conserving of vitality and understanding what’s wanted and when it’s wanted.
You may have labored with so many unbelievable administrators. How do you establish a filmmaker you need to work with?
You need to be sure you are on the identical web page. Practically at all times you get despatched the script first, and I need to guarantee that the director has the same concept to what I’ve after I learn it. I would like us to be on the identical web page. However I hear numerous actors speaking about actors’ administrators — they speak rather a lot to actors and take care of actors — and I really feel that filmmaking is commonly a really sensible factor and the best administrators, those who actually know what they’re doing, they will create an surroundings the place the actor can do his factor. I like to look at the character, and a number of the best administrators I’ve ever labored with don’t become involved within the course of. Means again within the day I did this movie Gosford Park with Robert Altman and it had an unbelievable forged. He pulled all of the forged collectively and the very first thing he mentioned was, “I don’t need you to come back to me to speak about your character. You all know why you’re right here.” I’m a terrific believer in a director who actually is aware of what they’re doing and creates a extremely nice construction and framework for an actor to have the ability to do their factor.
In the case of Nearer, which is screening on the Karlovy Fluctuate fest, I learn that when the play was being staged you had been considering taking part in Larry however you had been too younger and so had been forged as Dan.
There are a handful of scripts that we learn the place it’s actually, actually sturdy the best way it impacts you and resonates with you. After I’m sort of reminded of why I do what I do. Nearer, the play, I keep in mind the place I used to be, the place I used to be sitting, and what I used to be doing after I learn that piece of writing. I went up and so they had been doing a workshop, they weren’t even placing on the play, The Nationwide Theater simply had a have a look at the play. [Playwright] Patrick [Marber] mentioned, “I feel you’re too younger.” So I left. Some time later my agent got here to speak to me about one other play, I feel it was a David Hare play, and I mentioned, “That play Nearer was the most effective play I’ve learn in a really very long time.” He mentioned, “Effectively, Ciarán Hinds is taking part in Larry. The opposite half is free. Do you need to play that half?” And I feel they’re all nice elements. So I performed Dan within the authentic play and 7 years later I acquired a name saying Mike Nichols needs to fulfill you for lunch and he supplied me Larry at this luncheon. It was like a present from someplace.
Did Mike Nicholas know you needed to play Larry initially?
No, as a result of I solely talked about that years later. Marber knew as a result of he directed the unique workshop, so he knew tips on how to play Larry and perhaps there was a dialog with Mike Nichols, who noticed the unique manufacturing. However I don’t know.
What conversations did you will have with Mike Nichols over that lunch that made you understand you had been each on the identical web page about Nearer?
With Mike Nichols, it’s about maintaining with him. [Laughs.] He has such a superb thoughts. He is among the most clever human beings — by no means thoughts administrators — I’ve ever acquired to know. We did a rehearsal interval for that movie, which was just a few months earlier than we began taking pictures. It was simply a few weeks in New York the place we sat round. We’d learn a scene within the play after which simply focus on the problems that it introduced up. We wouldn’t focus on the scene itself. We wouldn’t work the scene. After which he left us simply to soak that up for just a few months. He was one other one which didn’t overly discuss all of it. He warned us that he could be doing very lengthy takes, and the topic was to be sure you’re ready and prepared. And so they had been actually lengthy takes, generally it was the entire scene. He was one of many highlights of my profession.
Was there anyone piece of course from Nichols that sticks with you 20 years after making the film?
There’s a scene with Julia [Roberts] that might have ended the primary half of the play the place now we have that ferocious argument. [Roberts’ Anna admits to Owen’s Larry she had an affair with the younger Dan.] It’s very tough to movie. The language is so graphic and brutal. It’s a brutal scene. We had been studying it and it was feeling uncomfortable in some methods, after which Mike determined to maneuver across the condo. Julia goes to maneuver and I comply with her, and we go upstairs and we return down. Mike was a terrific believer in scenes occurring whereas issues are happening. Not simply standing there reverse the opposite actor and saying traces. You might be concerned in doing one thing after which the scene begins to play and breathe by way of that. That motion within the scene utterly launched, it freed it up. It jogs my memory of a remark that Altman made after I was doing one of many scenes in Gosford Park. He stopped and went, “Oh my God, no, this the nightmare. Two actors going through one another doing dialogue.”
How was it to play reverse a personality that you simply as soon as performed?
I used to be so acquainted with the language as any individual who was within the authentic manufacturing. We examined it out in entrance of an viewers and realized what actually resonated and what didn’t, the rhythms, the humor of it. If I’m studying a script, I’ve to know the half that I’m being thought of for. I can’t learn till I do know it, as a result of I’m trying on the entire world by way of that individual’s perspective. So to immediately spin it, and have a look at it from a distinct place, it’s unbelievably acquainted and but completely new. It felt like such a present. It was such an uncommon expertise.
Did you and Jude Legislation ever discuss Dan because you as soon as performed him, or did you need to preserve a barrier between the play and the film?
The [latter]. I can consider nothing worse than me going, “Effectively, once we did the unique…” [Laughs]
Trying ahead, are there any filmmakers or genres that you simply haven’t labored with and in that you simply wish to?
I’d like to work with Paul Thomas Anderson and I’d like to work with Jacques Audiard. They’re the primary two that I consider. And I suppose I’ve at all times needed to discover a comedy that can swimsuit me. I’ve achieved issues with humor and I’ve been supplied [comedies] through the years however I’ve by no means discovered them significantly humorous. I’m not a terrific fan of broad comedies. It will be one thing I’d be eager to do, actually good comedy.