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East Indiaman Kent battling Confiance, a privateer vessel commanded by French corsair Robert Surcouf in October 1800, as depicted in a painting by Ambroise Louis Garneray.

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers. They were of great benefit to a smaller naval power or one facing an enemy dependent on trade: they disrupted commerce and pressured the enemy to deploy warships to protect merchant trade against commerce raiders. The cost was borne by investors hoping to profit from prize money earned from captured cargo and vessels. The proceeds would be distributed among the privateer's investors, officers, and crew. It has been argued that privateering was a less destructive and wasteful form of warfare, because the goal was to capture ships rather than to sink them.^[1]

Privateers were part of naval warfare from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Some privateers have been particularly influential in the annals of history. Sometimes the vessels would be commissioned into regular service as warships. The crew of a privateer might be treated as prisoners of war by the enemy country if captured.

Legal framework[link]

Being privately owned and run, privateers did not take orders from the Naval command. The letter of marque of a privateer would typically limit activity to a specific area and to the ships of specific nations. Typically, the owners or captain would be required to post a performance bond against breaching these conditions, or they might be liable to pay damages to an injured party. In the United Kingdom, letters of marque were revoked for various offences.

Conditions on board privateers varied widely. Some crews were treated as harshly as naval crews of the time, while others followed the comparatively relaxed rules of merchant ships. Some crews were made up of professional merchant seamen, others of pirates, debtors, and convicts. Some privateers ended up becoming pirates, not just in the eyes of their enemies but also of their own nations. William Kidd, for instance, began as a legitimate British privateer but was later hanged for piracy.

The Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was issued to abolish privateering. It regulated the relationship between neutral and belligerent and shipping on the high seas introducing new prize rules.^[2]

Ships[link]

Entrepreneurs converted many different types of vessels into privateers, including obsolete warships and refitted merchant ships. The investors would arm the vessels and recruit large crews, much larger than a merchantman or a naval vessel would carry, in order to crew the prizes they captured. Privateers generally cruised independently, but it was not unknown for them to form squadrons, or to co-operate with the regular navy. A number of privateers were part of the English fleet that opposed the Spanish Armada in 1588. Privateers generally avoided encounters with warships, as such encounters would be at best unprofitable. Still, such encounters did occur. For instance, in 1815 Chasseur encountered HMS St Lawrence, herself a former American privateer, mistaking her for a merchantman until too late; in this instance, the privateer prevailed.

The United States used mixed squadrons of frigates and privateers in the American Revolutionary War. Following the French Revolution, French privateers became a menace to British and American shipping in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean, resulting in the Quasi-War, a brief conflict between France and the United States, fought largely at sea, and to the Royal Navy's procuring Bermuda sloops to combat the French privateers.^[3]

Overall history[link]

16th century trade routes prey to privateering: Spanish treasure fleets linking the Caribbean to Seville, Manila-Acapulco galleons started in 1568 (white) and rival Portuguese India Armadas of 1498-1640 (blue)

England, and later the United Kingdom, used privateers to great effect and suffered much from other nations' privateering. In the late 16th century, English ships cruised in the Caribbean and off the coast of Spain, trying to intercept treasure fleets from the Spanish Main. At this early stage the idea of a regular navy (the Royal Navy, as distinct from the Merchant Navy) was not present, so there is little to distinguish the activity of English privateers from regular naval warfare. Attacking Spanish ships, even during peacetime, was part of a policy of military and economic competition with Spain - which had been monopolizing the maritime trade routes by enforcing a mare clausum policy along with the Portuguese - and helped provoke the first Anglo-Spanish War. Capturing a Spanish treasure ship would enrich the Crown as well as strike a practical blow against Spanish domination of America. Magnus Heinason was one privateer who served the Dutch against the Spanish. While his and others' attacks brought home a great deal of money, they hardly dented the flow of gold and silver from Mexico to Spain.

Elizabeth was succeeded by the first Stuart monarchs, James I and Charles I, who did not permit privateering. There were a number of unilateral and bilateral declarations limiting privateering between 1785 and 1823. However, the breakthrough came in 1856 when the Declaration of Paris, signed by all major European powers, stated that "Privateering is and remains abolished". The USA did not sign because a stronger amendment, protecting all private property from capture at sea, was not accepted. In the 19th century many nations passed laws forbidding their nationals from accepting commissions as privateers for other nations. The last major power to flirt with privateering was Prussia in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, when Prussia announced the creation of a 'volunteer navy' of ships privately owned and manned and eligible for prize money. The only difference between this and privateering was that these volunteer ships were under the discipline of the regular navy.

17th and 18th centuries[link]

CSS Savannah, a Confederate privateer.

Privateers were a large part of the total military force at sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the first Anglo-Dutch War, English privateers attacked the trade on which the United Provinces entirely depended, capturing over 1,000 Dutch merchant ships. During the subsequent war with Spain, Spanish and Flemish privateers in the service of the Spanish Crown, including the notorious Dunkirkers, captured 1,500 English merchant ships, helping to restore Dutch international trade.^[4] British trade, whether coastal, Atlantic, or Mediterranean, was also attacked by Dutch privateers and others in the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars.

During King George's War, approximately 36,000 Americans served aboard privateers at one time or another.^[5] During the Nine Years War, the French adopted a policy of strongly encouraging privateers, including the famous Jean Bart, to attack English and Dutch shipping. England lost roughly 4,000 merchant ships during the war.^[5] In the following War of Spanish Succession, privateer attacks continued, Britain losing 3,250 merchant ships.^[6] Parliament passed an updated Cruisers and Convoys Act in 1708 allocating regular warships to the defence of trade.

In the subsequent conflict, the War of Austrian Succession, the Royal Navy was able to concentrate more on defending British ships. Britain lost 3,238 merchantmen, a smaller fraction of her merchant marine than the enemy losses of 3,434.^[5] While French losses were proportionally severe, the smaller but better protected Spanish trade suffered the least and it was Spanish privateers who enjoyed much of the best allied plunder of British trade, particularly in the West Indies.

Britain[link]

England and Scotland separately, and together after they united to create the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, practised privateering. It was a way to gain for themselves some of the wealth the Spanish and Portuguese were taking from the New World before beginning their own trans-Atlantic settlement, and a way to assert naval power before a strong Royal Navy emerged.

Sir Andrew Barton, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, followed the example of his father, who had been issued with letters of marque by James III of Scotland to prey upon English and Portuguese shipping in 1485; the letters in due course were reissued to the son. Barton was killed following an encounter with the English in 1511.

Sir Francis Drake, who had close contact with the sovereign, was responsible for some damage to Spanish shipping, as well as attacks on Spanish settlements in the Americas in the 16th century. He participated in the successful English defence against the Spanish Armada in 1588, though he was also partly responsible for the failure of the English Armada against Spain in 1589.

Sir George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland was a successful privateer against Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. He is also famous for his short-lived 1598 capture of Fort San Felipe del Morro, the citadel protecting San Juan, Puerto Rico. He arrived in Puerto Rico on June 15, 1598, but by November of that year Clifford and his men had fled the island due to fierce civilian resistance. He gained sufficient prestige from his naval exploits to be named the official Champion of Queen Elizabeth I. Clifford became extremely wealthy through his buccaneering, but lost most of his money gambling on horse races.

Captain Christopher Newport led more attacks on Spanish shipping and settlements than any other English privateer. As a young man, Newport sailed with Sir Francis Drake in the attack on the Spanish fleet at Cadiz and participated in England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada. During the war with Spain, Newport seized fortunes of Spanish and Portuguese treasure in fierce sea battles in the West Indies as a privateer for Queen Elizabeth I. In 1592, Newport captured the Portuguese carrack Madre de Deus (Mother of God), valued at £500,000.

Sir Henry Morgan was a successful privateer. Operating out of Jamaica, he carried on a war against Spanish interests in the region, often using cunning tactics. His operation was prone to cruelty against those he captured, including torture to gain information about booty, and in one case using priests as human shields. Despite reproaches for some of his excesses, he was generally protected by Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor of Jamaica. He took an enormous amount of booty, as well as landing his privateers ashore and attacking land fortifications, including the sack of the city of Panama with only 1,400 crew^{[citation needed]}.

Other British privateers of note include Fortunatus Wright, Edward Collier, Sir John Hawkins, his son Sir Richard Hawkins, Michael Geare, and Sir Christopher Myngs. Notable British colonial privateers in Nova Scotia include Alexander Godfrey of the brig Rover and Joseph Barss of the schooner Liverpool Packet. The latter schooner captured over 50 American vessels during the War of 1812.

Bermudians[link]

The English colony of Bermuda, settled accidentally in 1609, turned from a failed agricultural economy to the sea after the 1684 dissolution of the Somers Isles Company. With a total area of 21 square miles (54 km²) and lacking any natural resources other than the Bermuda cedar, the colonists applied themselves fully to the maritime trades, developing the speedy Bermuda sloop, which was well suited both to commerce and to commerce raiding. Bermudian merchant vessels turned to privateering at every opportunity in the 18th century, preying on the shipping of Spain, France, and other nations during a series of wars^[vague]. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Bermuda was sending twice as many privateers to sea as any of the continental colonies. They typically left Bermuda with very large crews. This advantage in manpower was vital in seizing larger vessels, which themselves often lacked enough crewmembers to put up a strong defence. The extra crewmen were also useful as prize crews for returning captured vessels.

The Bahamas, which had been depopulated of its indigenous inhabitants by the Spanish, had been settled by England, beginning with the Eleutheran Adventurers, dissident Puritans driven out of Bermuda during the English Civil War. Spanish and French attacks destroyed New Providence in 1703, creating a stronghold for pirates, and it became a thorn in the side of British merchant trade through the area. In 1718, Britain appointed Woodes Rogers Governor of the Bahamas, and sent him at the head of a force to reclaim the settlement. Before his arrival, however, the pirates had been forced to surrender by a force of Bermudian privateers who had been issued letters of marque by the Governor of Bermuda.

Bermuda was under the de facto control of the Turks Islands, with their lucrative salt industry, from the late 17th century to the early 19th. The Bahamas made perpetual attempts to claim the Turks for itself. On several occasions, this involved seizing the vessels of Bermudian salt traders. A virtual state of war was said to exist between Bermudian and Bahamian vessels for much of the 18th Century. When the Bermudian sloop Seaflower was seized by the Bahamians in 1701, the response of Bermuda Governor Bennett was to issue letters of marque to Bermudian vessels. In 1706, Spanish and French forces ousted the Bermudians, but were driven out themselves three years later by the Bermudian privateer Captain Lewis Middleton. His ship, the Rose, attacked a Spanish and a French privateer holding a captive English vessel. Defeating the two enemy vessels, the Rose then cleared out the thirty-man garrison left by the Spanish and French.^[7]

Despite strong sentiments in support of the rebels, especially in the early stages, Bermudian privateers turned as aggressively on American shipping during the American War of Independence. The importance of privateering to the Bermudian economy had been increased not only by the loss of most of Bermuda's continental trade, but also by the Palliser Act, which forbade Bermudian vessels from fishing the Grand Banks. Bermudian trade with the rebellious American colonies actually carried on throughout the war. Some historians credit the large number of Bermuda sloops (reckoned at over a thousand) built in Bermuda as privateers and sold illegally to the Americans as enabling the rebellious colonies to win their independence.^[8] Also, the Americans were dependent on Turks salt, and one hundred barrels of gunpowder were stolen from a Bermudian magazine and supplied to the rebels at the request of George Washington, in exchange for which the Continental Congress authorised the sale of supplies to Bermuda, which was dependent on American produce. The realities of this interdependence did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm with which Bermudian privateers turned on their erstwhile countrymen.

An American naval captain,^[who?] ordered to take his ship out of Boston Harbor to eliminate a pair of Bermudian privateering vessels that had been picking off vessels missed by the Royal Navy, returned frustrated, saying, "the Bermudians sailed their ships two feet for every one of ours".^[9] A pair of Bermudian-born brothers,^[who?] captaining two sloops, carried out the only attack on Bermuda during the war; all they achieved before they retreated was to damage a fort and spike its guns.

When the Americans captured the Bermudian privateer Regulator, they discovered that virtually all of her crew were black slaves. Authorities in Boston offered these men their freedom, but all 70 elected to be treated as prisoners of war. Sent as such to New York on the sloop Duxbury, they seized the vessel and sailed it back to Bermuda.

The American War of 1812 saw an encore of Bermudian privateering, which had died out after the 1790s. The decline of Bermudian privateering was due partly to the buildup of the naval base in Bermuda, which reduced the Admiralty's reliance on privateers in the western Atlantic, and partly to successful American legal suits and claims for damages pressed against British privateers, a large portion of which were aimed squarely at the Bermudians.^[10] During the course of the American War of 1812, Bermudian privateers captured 298 ships, some 19% of the 1,593 vessels captured by British naval and privateering vessels between the Great Lakes and the West Indies.^[11]

United States[link]

Pride of Baltimore II, replica United States topsail schooner, favored by privateers for its speed and ability to sail close to the wind.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress, and some state governments (on their own initiative), issued privateering licenses, authorizing "legal piracy", to merchant captains in an effort to take prizes from the British Navy and Tory (Loyalist) privateers. This was done due to the relatively small number of commissioned American naval vessels and the pressing need for prisoner exchange.

About 55,000 American seamen served aboard the privateers.^[12] They quickly sold their prizes, dividing their profits with the financier (persons or company) and the state (colony). Long Island Sound became a hornets' nest of privateering activity during the American Revolution (1775–1783), as most transports to and from New York went through the Sound. New London, Connecticut was a chief privateering port for the American colonies, leading to the British Navy blockading it in 1778-1779. Chief financiers of privateering included Thomas & Nathaniel Shaw of New London and John McCurdy of Lyme. In the months before the British raid on New London and Groton, a New London privateer took Hannah in what is regarded as the largest prize taken by any American privateer during the war. Retribution was likely part of Gov. Clinton's (NY) motivation for Arnold's Raid, as the Hannah had carried many of his most cherished items.

Naval battle off Halifax, Nova Scotia

American privateers are thought to have seized up to 300 British ships during the war. One of the more successful of these ships was the Prince de Neufchatel, which once captured nine British prizes in swift succession in the English Channel.^{[citation needed]} The British ship Jack was captured and turned into an American privateer, only to be captured again by the British in the naval battle off Halifax, Nova Scotia. American privateers not only fought naval battles but also raided numerous communities in British colonies, such as the Raid on Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (1782).

The United States Constitution authorized the U.S. Congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal. Between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1812, less than 30 years, Britain, France, Naples, the Barbary States, Spain, and the Netherlands seized approximately 2,500 American ships.^[13] Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual revenues in 1800,^[14] and would lead the United States to crush the Barbary states in the Barbary Wars.

During the War of 1812, the British attacked Essex, Connecticut, and burned the ships in the harbor, due to the construction there of a number of privateers. This was the greatest financial loss of the entire War of 1812 suffered by the Americans. However, the private fleet of James De Wolf, which sailed under the flag of the American government in 1812, was most likely a key factor in the victorious naval campaign of the war. De Wolf's ship, the Yankee, was possibly the most financially successful ship of the war.

James De Wolf

The US was not one of the initial signatories of the 1856 Declaration of Paris which outlawed privateering, and the Confederate Constitution authorized use of privateers. However, the USA did offer to adopt the terms of the Declaration during the American Civil War, when the Confederates sent several privateers to sea before putting their main effort in the more effective commissioned raiders.

No letter of marque has been legitimately issued by the United States since the nineteenth century. The status of submarine hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of the second world war has created significant confusion. According to one story, the United States Navy issued a Letter of Marque to the Airship Resolute on the West Coast of the United States at the beginning of World War II, making it the first time the US Navy commissioned a privateer since the War of 1812.^[15] However, this story, along with various other accounts referring to the airships Resolute and Volunteer as operating under a "privateer status", is highly dubious. Since neither the Congress nor the President appears to have authorized a privateer during the war, the Navy would not have had the authority to do so by itself.^[16]

Cultural influence[link]

The University of New Orleans sports teams are referred to as the "UNO Privateers."

The State University of New York Maritime College mascot is a Privateer, and their sports teams are referred to as "The Privateers."

The Thousand Islands Privateers are a professional hockey team 0f the Federal Hockey League, founded in 2010.

In fiction[link]

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Notions of privateering have provided a rich and often colourful source for contemporary culture in exploring social history or providing vehicles for entertainment. Authors of historical fiction offer many instances where Horatio Hornblower, a British Royal Navy officer created by C. S. Forester, engaged in numerous encounters with privateers. Patrick O'Brian's "The Letter of Marque" is set during the Napoleonic Wars. The protagonist in Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes is a privateer. The hero of naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson's first novel, The Devil to Pay, commands a small privateer.

Science fiction writer Poul Anderson in his book The Star Fox, conjures a future in which the system of letters of marque is revived and "space privateers" battle in starships.

Star Trek references privateering, where a Federation ship is destroyed by Breen privateers.

In the 2011 film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Hector Barbossa is a privateer on behalf of King George II.

The 2011 novel, The Jefferson Key, by Steve Berry, refers to a modern society of privateers known as The Commonwealth, which was first assembled during the American Revolution.

See also[link]

• Auxiliary cruiser
• Armed merchantman
• Barbary pirates
• Corsair
• Commerce raiding
• Dunkirkers
• Fortunatus Wright
• Letter of marque
• Mercenary
• Piracy
• Reprisal
• William Kidd

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Faye Kert, Prize and Prejudice Privateering and Naval Prize in Atlantic Canada in the War of 1812. Research in maritime history, no. 11. St. John's, Nfld: International Maritime Economic History Association, 1997.
• A. Bryant Nichols Jr., Captain Christopher Newport: Admiral of Virginia, Sea Venture, 2007
• Smith, Joshua M. Battle for the Bay: The Naval War of 1812 (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2011).
• Ross, Nicholas. "The Provision of Naval Defense in the Early American Republic: A Comparison of the U.S. Navy and Privateers, 1789–1815." The Independent Review 16, no. 3 (Winter), 2011.

External links[link]

• The Library of Economics & Liberty: PRIVATEERING - 1899 Encyclopaedia entry.
• The Bermudian: Bermuda in the Privateering Business, by Lt. Col. Gavin Shorto
• The Canadian Privateering Home Page
• American Privateers in The War Of 1812 Investigates the myths and facts behind a sea battle which some sources contend changed the course of the War of 1812 and the future of America. Includes an extensive examination of the legal and tactical aspects of privateering.
• Andrew Sherburne's Experiences on a Privateer During the Revolutionary War
• Privateers of Voyage Century Online
• Modern Day Privateering and Its Affect on Democracy
• Jameson, John Franklin.
• Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents at Project Gutenberg.
• Essay Sample: The History of Privateering
• Who Begat Whom: Hezekiah Frith

Clive Owen
Owen at the 2005 San Sebastian International Film Festival
Born	(1964-10-03) 3 October 1964 (age 47) Coventry, West Midlands, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1987–present
Spouse	Sarah-Jane Fenton (m. 1995) «start: (1995)»"Marriage: Sarah-Jane Fenton to Clive Owen" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Clive_Owen) 2 daughters

Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then garnered critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before getting international notice for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, Owen won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in the drama Closer (2004). He has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009).

Early life[link]

The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, in the English Midlands, a son of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer of Welsh descent. His father left the family when Owen was three years old, and despite a brief reconciliation when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged.^[1] Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk,^[2] he has described his childhood as "rough."^[1] While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1987^[3] with a class that included Rebecca Pidgeon, Serena Harragin, Mark Womack, and Liza Tarbuck. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.^[4]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

Initially, Owen carved out a career in television. In 1988 Owen starred as Gideon Sarn in a BBC production of Precious Bane and the Channel 4 film Vroom before the 1990s saw him become a regular on stage and television in the UK, notably his lead role in the ITV series Chancer, followed by an appearance in the Thames Television production of Lorna Doone.

He won critical acclaim for his performances in the 1991 Stephen Poliakoff film Close My Eyes – in which he has a full frontal nude scene – about a brother and sister who embark on an incestuous love affair. He subsequently appeared in The Magician, Class of '61, Century, Nobody's Children, An Evening with Gary Lineker, Doomsday Gun, Return of the Native and then a Carlton production called Sharman, about a private detective. In 1996, he appeared in his first major Hollywood film The Rich Man's Wife alongside Halle Berry before finding international acclaim in a Channel 4 film directed by Mike Hodges called Croupier (1998). In Croupier, he played the title role of a struggling writer who takes a job in a London casino as inspiration for his work, only to get caught up in a robbery scheme. In 1999, he appeared as an accident-prone driver in Split Second, his first BBC production in a decade.

Clive Owen at the Berlin Film Festival, 2009

He then starred in The Echo, a BBC1 drama. He starred in a film called Greenfingers about a criminal who goes to work in a garden, before appearing in the BBC1 mystery series Second Sight. In 2001, he provided the voice-over for a BBC2 documentary about popular music through the years called Walk On By, as well as starring in a highly-acclaimed theatre production called A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, about a couple with a severely handicapped daughter.

He became well known to North American audiences in the summer of 2001 after starring as The Driver in The Hire, a series of short films sponsored by BMW and made by prominent directors. He then appeared in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, alongside an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ryan Phillippe. He appeared in the 2002 hit The Bourne Identity. In 2003, he teamed up with Hodges again to make I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. He starred in Beyond Borders and took on the title role in King Arthur, for which he took riding lessons.

Recognition and acclaim[link]

Owen appeared in the West End and Broadway hit play Closer, by Patrick Marber, which was produced as a film, and was released in 2005. He played "Dan" in the play, but was "Larry" the dermatologist in the film version. His portrayal of Larry in the film version earned him a lot of recognition and acclaim as well as the Golden Globe and BAFTA award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He noted that the expectations of him since the Oscar nomination have not changed the way he approaches film-making, stating "I try, every film I do, to be as good as I can and that's all I can do."^[5]

Clive Owen at the Toronto Film Festival, 2011

After Closer, he appeared in Derailed alongside Jennifer Aniston, the comic book thriller Sin City as the noir antihero Dwight McCarthy and as a mysterious bank robber in Inside Man. Despite public denials, Owen had long been rumoured to be a possible successor to Pierce Brosnan in the role of James Bond. A public opinion poll in the United Kingdom in October 2005 (SkyNews) found that he was the public's number one choice to star in the next installment of the series. In that same month, however, it was announced that fellow British actor Daniel Craig would become the next James Bond. In an interview in the September 2007 issue of Details, he claimed that he was never offered or even approached concerning the role.^[6] In 2006, Owen spoofed the Bond connection by making an appearance in the remake of The Pink Panther in which he plays a character named "Nigel Boswell, Agent 006" (when he introduces himself to Inspector Clouseau, he quips that Owen's character is "one short of the big time").

Owen at the Children of Men Premiere in Mexico City, 2006

In 2006, Owen starred in the highly acclaimed Children of Men,^[7] for which he received widespread praise. The film was nominated for various awards, including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Owen worked on the screenplay, although he was uncredited.^[8] The next year he starred alongside Paul Giamatti in the film Shoot 'Em Up and appeared as Sir Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I of England in the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He appeared in the Christmas special of the Ricky Gervais show Extras, as revealed in the video podcast teaser. Owen starred in The International (2009), a film which he described as a "paranoid political thriller".^[9] He then played the lead in The Boys Are Back,^[10] an Australian adaptation of the book The Boys Are Back In Town by Simon Carr.

In April 2010, he was cast as the lead in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's horror-thriller Intruders.^[11]

In June 2010 it was announced that Owen and Nicole Kidman will star in an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn entitled Hemingway & Gellhorn. James Gandolfini served as executive producer to the film, written by Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl. The film was directed by Philip Kaufman.^[12]

Owen shot Shadow Dancer^[13], joint Irish UK production about a young mother who is heavily involved with the Irish republican Movement. She is arrested in London following an aborted bombing attempt and must either choose to inform on her family or spend the rest of her life behind bars. The film also stars Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson and Aidan Gillen and is being directed by James Marsh.

Personal life[link]

In an incident he later described as "very schmaltzy", Owen met his future wife, actress Sarah-Jane Fenton, when they performed the leads in Romeo and Juliet at the Young Vic.^[14] The couple married on 6 March 1995 and live in Highgate, London and Wrabness, north Essex, with their two daughters – Hannah and Eve.^{[citation needed]}

In November 2006,^[15] he became patron of the Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich, Essex, England and launched an appeal for funds to repair deteriorating elements of the fabric.^[16][17]

He enjoys the music of indie rock band Hard-Fi and has been seen at two of their concerts, Brixton Academy, 15 May 2006^[18] and Wembley Arena, 18 December 2007. He is also an avid Liverpool F.C fan.^[19]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Clive Owen

• Clive Owen at the Internet Movie Database
• Clive Owen at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Clive Owen on Charlie Rose (15 December 2006) at Google Videos (Adobe Flash video)