Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor who first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then received 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, he 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).
Owen has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Derailed (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009). In 2012, he earned his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his role in Hemingway & Gellhorn. Since 2014, Owen has played Dr. John W. Thackery on the Cinemax medical drama series The Knick, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination.
The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, West Midlands, in the United Kingdom, to Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer. 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. Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk, he has described his childhood as "rough". 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. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.
The day the war was over, so the story goes
You could hear the churchbells ring hear the laughter
But with hope and glory, lingers memories
In the dark a girl would dance with her shadows
First she lose her father in the burning debris
Sorrow took her mother so castly so she was
Brought up in a house of strangers
Many years went by so her torment grew a place where children mustn't cry
Not a soul to talk too she created her friends through a roomlit view
Hand in hand but never shy, the silent few
Locked in a room the walls were closing in
It shocked her system from within so she lies staring at the images inside
Shadow dancer in the dark it's O.K. to she'd a tear
Remember time to forget shadow dancer in the dark