Daniel Craig has been James Bond for two films now but Clive Owen still can't escape it. Though Owen was a rumored frontrunner after Pierce Brosnan's last film, he never wanted the part. Just because he's ruggedly handsome and looks good in a suit, people keep bringing it up.

At the press junket for The International, he had to put on a stoic face and deflect the 007 comparisons. The thriller has Owen investigating a corrupt bank. Though there is one explosive gunfight in the Guggenheim museum, the rest of the film is free of outrageous stunts and focuses on real world politics.

Owen wears a suit in the film, but it's a rumpled, budget number and his character is disheveled and scruffy from the strain of the case. He was a tad more dashing in person, sporting a black designer suit more worthy of Bond. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, so even if his answer to a question was in the negative, he had a thoughtful explanation of why.

Question: Was the Guggenheim shootout the roughest thing to do?

Clive Owen: It was the most physical and it took a long time, and it was always going to be a huge scene in the movie, even from the very first time I sat down with Tom [Tykwer] to talk about the movie. He said, "It's not going to be an action film per se, but when there is action, I want it to be incredibly tense and very explosive," the Guggenheim being obviously the biggest set piece.

It just took a long time to film. We were walking around the Guggenheim months before shooting, Tom talking to me, [about] how he envisions the scene. We're walking up the rotunda and we had the whole thing really exquisitely planned out. The thing about it is, it's not just get everyone in there and let's shoot out the Guggenheim. It's ever developing. It's like you go in there and things keep changing and developing and it gets crazier and crazier but it's always this forward momentum I just think I haven't seen in a film. It's one of the most exquisitely realized scenes I've been involved in.

Q: Otherwise it really isn't an action film though.

CO: No, I mean, I think that each location we went to has a big wonderful set piece. The thing about the Guggenheim that was important was that it didn't seem out of context with the rest of the film. You don't want to suddenly go, "Now we're going to do this amazing big shootout in the Guggenheim." It had to keep in with the rest of the film. It had to feel like it belonged in the movie and that's why I think he did it so brilliantly, because it's hugely entertaining. To trash the Guggenheim to that extent with snow coming in there at the end, it feels like a movie, but it's in keeping with what's gone before. It feels like it belongs there. In the wrong hands, that sequence could have just looked like it was suddenly oh, there's a big flashy shootout, but it doesn't feel like that.

Q: So is this the anti-Bond?

CO: No, it is what it is. The one thing for me playing the character that was very important was that there was no vanity. There was no time for self-reflection. The guy is only looking one way and that's outwards. He's obsessed. He's a passionate, obsessive character. There's no vanity there and it was important the way I looked clothes-wise, the way my face looked. He doesn't care about what he's putting out in any way and that's not typical for a lead character in a movie. But the guy, it was important that the clothes looked down because there's no time to be thinking about how he's presenting himself because he's so obsessed outwardly.

Q: Does it take a lot out of you to get into this intense mode for this, and maybe films like Children of Men?

CO: Yeah, in this film especially. I'd say they were very different. You think of Children of Men and that was a very apathetic, given-up character. This character has to drive the movie in terms of his anger, his passion. It's a paranoid political thriller and the guy at the middle of it all is railing saying, "You've got to believe me, you've got to believe me." You have to put that into every scene that you do because you've got to drive it. Otherwise, if you don't care crazily about it, and people don't buy that you're caring, then people aren't going to go with you. So every scene had to have this drive and this energy and this commitment, and it does because it's not the kind of movie where you can ever, ever go on the back foot. You've got to be driving.

Q: Did you have any idea when you were making it that we'd all be thinking about banks when the movie came out?

CO: No, it's incredible how timely it is really because you consider they were honing the script for two years and then we started shooting the film over a year ago, and what's happened in the last year with banks and the way the attention's on them now and the way people are looking at them, it's incredibly timely. When I was sent the script, I was sent a lot of research that it was based on as well. A huge part of the movie is saying look at banks, are they using people's money appropriately? Are they completely sound institutions? And the whole world's doing that now. So it's incredibly timely.

Q: How do you stay juiced about what you do, and not get jaded?

CO: Maybe a few years ago, I got into a situation where I maybe did three films back to back and I realized I really hate that rhythm. I think you've got to have appetite. And to jump from one film to the other, one, it doesn't give you enough time to prepare properly and two, you get tired and that's not good. The rhythm for me in the last couple years in these films, there've been proper gaps between where there's been time to talk and prepare and get in the right place, and I've also been blessed that Tony Gilroy [the writer/director of Owen's upcoming film Duplicity] and Tom Tykwer are amazing talents. They're both as good a director as I can dream to work for, and that juices me up because I know that the people I'm working for have incredible taste. There's a confidence going in that you're going to be very well looked after and there's a good chance that the film will turn out well, so that keeps me very juiced.

Q: Did you used to worry if you don't take a job -- who knows when the next one will come?

CO: It's slightly that but it's also about being really tough when it comes to...you might want to do that film, but going from that film straight to that film where they've already started shooting and you've got to get on a plane and go, you're not going to be ready enough to do it justice.

There is a privilege in knowing that there are things around I'm being offered. So it's not like if I turn that down, there's going to be nothing else there to take its place, but I think it's certainly important to me in the way I work that I have time before a movie begins, that I don't jump from one to another. I'm not very good at it.

Q: Is it also balance between family and career?

CO: But that's the same. It ties in exactly the same with the family in terms of when you do movies tied together, it means you're away for a very, very long time. That's not good. So I've been very lucky. The rhythm the last year or two, for instance this last year I spent the entire summer holidays from when the girls broke from school until they went back, home with them. Then I went off to Australia and did a film there. It feels like there's proper family time and there's proper work time and I'm lucky. Not everybody has the privilege of that choice but I think dictating the rhythm is important.

Q: During that time when you had to take whatever you could get, what was the worst audition you ever had?

CO: There was quite a few. There were quite a few. The days when I used to come to L.A. with a very small little film, like I'd come on the back of some tiny film that had a tiny distribution like Close My Eyes or Bent, going around and doing the rounds then was pretty tough because you were meeting the assistant of the assistant of the assistant who asks you questions like, "Do you play goodies or baddies?" Or the common one was, "So, you do a lot of theater." It was pretty soul destroying, I must admit.

Q: Do you have any plans to go back to stage?

CO: I've been thinking about doing a play but I haven't got one that I'm desperate to do. I haven't done a play for seven years. Again, I'd really need some appetite. I really want to really want to do it and there isn't anything that I've been offered or a play up my sleeve that I'm desperate to do, but if the right thing came along, yeah, I would do a play.

Q: Would you consider directing?

CO: I think about directing, but again, it's such a different rhythm from acting that again, there is no script that I've suddenly gone, "I would love to direct that." I do flirt with the idea of directing and I just would need to find something. The rhythm of a director is a two-year cycle as opposed to a few months for an actor. Tom Tykwer's a workaholic who was literally, at one point during the movie, during the Guggenheim sequence, was shooting night and day shoots with a second unit, going from one set to the other set and then back again. I mean, the work ethic from him is unbelievable. At times I was generally worried, thinking he won't keep this up. But amazingly, he did. I think directing ultimately comes down to taste in all aspects of what a film is, and the coming together of it. I think Tom Tykwer has got exquisite taste.


The International opens in theaters nationwide on Friday February 13th.