Movies - TV
Alfonso Cuarón Relied On Clive Owen’s ‘BS’ Sense While He Was Writing Children
Of Men
By SANDY SCHAEFER
From playing strong, silent types to insecure, entitled, affluent men or hard-edged antiheroes, Clive Owen is comfortable in almost any role. However, it wasn’t Owen’s versatility that earned him the role in Alfonso Cuarón's hauntingly prescient 2006 sci-fi thriller "Children of Men,” instead it was his BS meter.
After completing his acclaimed 2001 road trip drama “Y tu mama también,” Cuarón began writing his adaption of P.D. James’ 1992 novel, “The Children of Men." Cuarón noted that Clive Owen was essential to the film’s creative process, saying “Man, we would just sit and riff with Clive. He has such a great smell for bulls***.”
Cuarón continued, “...he understands the kind of feeling, of making what we're making. The rhythm of the scenes was on his shoulders because everything was pivoting around him. He's the pivot of the scene… so in many ways he was an amazing filmmaker… The whole film was a triad with Chivo [the film’s director of photography], Clive, and me."