Clive Owen: Beyond the Pale

"His only objective is trying to keep these people alive as long as he can," says Owen of the role. "It's a complicated character. There were some people who were very nervous that he would seem too arrogant. I never saw that. I finished that script and I found him completely redeemable. He didn't care what people thought of him, so I thought that was the best way to approach the character. It wasn't about being charming, it wasn't about being likable; it was about achieving his objective. He's fallible, he's a human being, he's not perfect, he's not a hero. To me it was all completely believable because of what he was trying to do."

Originally an Oliver Stone project Martin Campbell (Vertical Limit, The Mask of Zorro, GoldenEye) directed the fiery and fraught onscreen romance between Owen and Jolie might have been left to the questionable chemistry of Costner and Catherine Zeta-Jones (once cast as Sarah, an expatriate American leading a lost life in a bourgeois British marriage).

"It becomes about two extraordinary people. And there are two actors out there actually doing it that is the way you are invited into these worlds," says Owen. "It's also a love story, and you're constantly grappling with the combination, but ultimately you have a choice. You want to make a movie that's about something.