Clive Owen Talks King Arthur

For Christmas 2004, Clive Owen will be seen as King Arthur in Disney's big-budget adaptation from director Antoine Fuqua and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The actor talked to the Chicago Sun-Times about the role and film.

What appealed to him was the script. "It's a new take on the whole King Arthur story -- unlike anything you've ever seen before," he says. "What I didn't realize is that King Arthur is actually a myth that developed over hundreds of years and has been slowly pieced together.

"There's this sort of romantic vision of Arthur. Our version is set earlier than it's usually set. We have it at 500 A.D. as opposed to medieval times. Basically, the Roman empire is crumbling.

"I play Arthur, who is half-Roman," Owen says. "He's a commander of a crack team of military knights who, at the beginning of the movie, gets the mission from hell -- to go into dangerous, unknown territory and rescue a family as the Saxons are invading by the thousands, and the rebels are out there fighting. Meanwhile, Arthur has always held onto Rome as something he wants to return to and something he reveres, but it keeps changing."

There's much more of the interview at the source link above!