What Happened to Clive Owen?
If, in 2006, you assumed that Clive Owen would be the next James Bond or the next “hot thing” in Hollywood, you’d find few people disagreeing with you. 2006 was a great year for Owen with both Inside Man and Children of Men making waves critically and commercially. Owen was poised to become the next Brad-Pitt-level A-lister, but, over the next fifteen years, would find himself horribly underutilized time and time again.
Why didn’t this powerhouse actor ever become the leading man superstar he deserved to be?
After his stellar 2006, Owen appeared in Shoot ’Em Up in 2007, a film that, while not half-bad, failed to recoup its $39 million budget and is regarded as a box office failure.
In 2009, Owen was poised to come back in a big way with the release of The International, a mid-budget crime thriller featuring Owen as an Interpol detective who becomes embroiled in a global financial conspiracy. While the film did recoup its budget, it’s lukewarm critical reception and lackluster word-of-mouth prevented it from making a big splash (although Roger Ebert seemed to like it!)
Duplicity, also released in 2009, saw Clive Owen take a lighter role this time around, starring as a rival spy pitted against co-star Julia Roberts. The film performed decently well at the box office but seemed rather forgettable to both audiences and critics, garnering middling reviews and fading into movie obscurity shortly after its release.
This was, in many ways, the final nail in the coffin. Following Duplicity, Owen stared in several smaller movies, The Boys Are Back in 2009 and Trust in 2010, both of which failed to make any money and weren’t widely seen by audiences.
2011’s Killer Elite largely foreshadowed what was to come in Owen’s career. Owen plays one of the antagonists in this run-of-the-mill Jason Statham vehicle but isn’t given enough space to really shine.
From here, Owen stars in a handful of essentially indie movies that nobody really saw and that made no money, including Intruders, Shadow Dancer, Blood Ties, and Words and Pictures.
2015’s Last Knight, a mid-budget medieval action film, seemed like it might mark a return for Owen, placing him alongside Morgan Freeman, but the film was terrible and — you guessed it — made no money.
One bright spot for Owen across 2014–2015 was the TV series The Knick, a show following the lives of several doctors and nurses at the New York Knickerbocker Hospital in the early twentieth century. Directed by Steven Soderbergh for Cinemax, the series only ran for two seasons (out of a planned six) before it was cancelled, but was incredibly well put together and featured a fantastic performance from Owen as Dr. John Thackery.
It’s a largely disappointing story for Owen in the years that follow. He takes on mostly supporting roles in movies that, frankly, seem below him. There’s the smaller roles in big budget fare like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Gemini Man, neither of which were good films, but then the also appears in a supporting role in streamer movies like The Informer and Anon, forgettable films that hit Netflix and then are never talked about again.
There isn’t much on the cards for Clive Owen at the moment in terms of film, but he will be starring in Monsieur Spade, a TV series following Detective Sam Spade (from The Maltese Falcon) living in France in the 1960s. Here’s to hoping it’s good!
None of this is to say that Clive Owen isn’t talented. On the contrary, Owen is an incredible actor who I think improves just about any movie he’s in. What Owen’s career demonstrates is how easily one or two movie choices can determine the trajectory of the rest of your professional life.
Overall, the 2010s was a disappointing Clive Owen decade with nothing as ‘knockout’ as Children of Men or Inside Man. There’s nothing wrong with doing supporting roles — heck, he was one of the best parts of The Bourne Identity – but Owen has a leading-man charisma and charm that seems wasted with many of his recent films. I always thought he would be well suited for a James-Bond-esque or Jason-Bourne-esque role, but, given that’s he’s 56 now, that seems unlikely.
Owen’s career is still far from over, however, and I’m hoping that the 2020s give us a well-deserved Clive Owen renaissance!
What is your favourite Clive Owen film? Be sure to let me know in the comments!
