Clive Owen Talks About Parenting & His New Role

The dashing Clive Owen plays a widowed father in his new film The Boys Are Back. The family drama is based on a true story about a journalist whose wife dies from cancer, leaving him to raise a young son and a teenager.

The actor spoke to the Vancouver Sun while staying at his Toronto hotel, the night before the movie's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

He said that although the character he plays seems like a departure to who Clive is in reality, it didn't seem like one. It was exciting for him to explore the different parenting styles of fathers and mothers.

“It felt like I was exploring a big part of my life that I haven’t explored in my work before.”

“I am a parent of two girls and I’ve always seen that as very separate. I go off and make movies and the rest of the time I’m a parent. And this was a script exploring all that world.”

“A day with dad is inevitably different from a day with mom,” he said. “It just is. I think that the heavy, nurturing thing that a mother brings to a child is different from a guy. This is taken to the extreme, but there is almost an element of that with dad. I think it’s just an instinct thing. We’re not as overly protective as mothers are. Sometimes that’s not good, but I like that the film is about that, too.”

Although Clive has allowed daughters 12-year-old Hannah and 10-year-old Eve, to watch the movie, most of them have been off limits.

“They’re just thrilled they can actually watch one of my movies because usually they can’t — they’re too young,” he said. “They’ll have a lot to catch up (on) when they’re 18.”