Clive Owen Interview

Brit actor Clive Owen plays ace cop who is losing his vision in `Second Sight'

By Kinney Littlefield The Orange County Register

The eyes have it on the eerie murder miniseries "Second Sight'' the eloquent eyes of intense British actor Clive Owen. Owen plays troubled Detective Chief Inspector Ross Tanner on the surreally tinged English ``Mystery!'' two-parter airing Thursday and Oct. 7 on PBS.

His on-camera challenge: how to portray a cocky cop on the scent of a killer while his vision fractures and his brain hallucinates from the rare real-life disease called AZOOR (acute zonal occult outer retinopathy).

Minute to minute, Owen had to match his turn to the miniseries' fast, kaleidoscopic special effects -- distorted glimpses of suspects or crime scenes from Tanner's freaky point of view.

"This piece is slightly fantastic,'' Owen, 34, said from London recently. "The most important thing was that you didn't do fumbling, phony, I-am-losing-my-sight kind of acting.

"The piece lent itself to be subtle as you like because actually the audience is one step ahead of Tanner -- they're alert to his smallest hesitation ahead of times.

"Of course, when someone is losing his sight it's quite bleak. Tanner's a character who starts off young, confident, successful, very arrogant, divorced from his wife, having casual sex _ and then suddenly this devastating thing happens. And he's forced to change. Bizarrely, the dark, disturbing qualities also make for very sexy, entertaining television.''

"Second Sight'' was written by Paula Milne ("The Politician's Wife''), whose own father lost his vision. At times its tone approaches the unsettling vibes of "The Blair Witch Project'' or ``The Sixth Sense.''

Shortly after Tanner starts his hunt for the killer of troubled, affluent college student Matthew Bendrix (Tom Mullion) near the Bendrix family estate, he is diagnosed with AZOOR. Scared and disoriented, he tries to hide his condition from his colleagues on the force.

He starts relying more heavily on his intuition as he interrogates Bendrix's overly doting mother, withholding stepfather, the stepfather's disreputable twin brother and the family's nanny.

Yet in a kind of metaphor for seeing what we choose to see, faltering vision and gut instinct lead Tanner off the killer's trail.

"In AZOOR it's something to do with the nerve endings sending messages to the brain in a confused state,'' Owen said. ``The most common thing is thinking you see things where they were, even if they're not there.

"For me, playing Tanner, the most crucial element was spending long, long sessions with someone at the Royal National Institute for the Blind who helps run their help line, whose vision was very close to the condition I was supposed to have. He was able to talk about his emotional responses, tips on what he tried to do to disguise the fact that he was going blind, the terror of realizing he would have to change as a person.''

Tanner soon develops a repertoire of hesitant coping gestures. He tries to mask his dysfunction with his fingers -- furtively fumbling for the spigot he can't see on a water cooler, subtly searching his way along corridor walls.

"I was very helped because a lot of that stuff was scripted -- the finger across the wall and all that was all scripted by Paula,'' Owen said.

"And yes, vulnerable was one of the key, key elements I was playing.''

Tanner is thrown a lifeline of sorts. He is teamed against his will with ambitious, attractive Detective Inspector Catherine Tully (Claire Skinner).

When Tully guesses his secret they strike a bargain. She will help Tanner cover for his fading sight if he lets her pursue the investigation in her own way -- to advance her own career, of course.

An ambivalent relationship indeed -- which also gets steamy.

Owen: "If he didn't have this problem they definitely wouldn't have got on at all -- never mind get together. But they do this double act. They both want something from the other. Otherwise it would have been too cute. It's nice to play the ambiguity of that rather than to make it too comfortable.''

PBS fans may recognize Owen's piercing eyes and sculpted cheekbones from his title role on "Chancer,'' a two-season Brit series "about a young wheeler-dealer pulling corporate scams every week.''

Stage-trained Owen made a deliberate decision to get out of television for a while after "Chancer.''

"I didn't want to become a mainstream telly actor,'' he said. ``I've probably done seven or eight films here -- none of which have hit big in America. I did the play 'Closer' -- a huge hit here -- and a movie of 'Bent,' but I've never really traveled across the water.

"I mean if I had a choice I'd just do movies. Really, I think every actor wants to be a movie star -- even great figures of the stage.''

Owen also appeared in CBS' "Return of the Native'' and HBO's "Doomsday Gun.''

Coming projects: "I did the film `Croupier' in which I play a writer who becomes a croupier and it's all in voice-over as he just cynically works in a casino to get observations for a book."

And I did an American film, a quirky comedy shot here with the working title 'Greenfingers' about a group of prisoners who become champion gardeners."

And the last thing I shot was a lively low-budget film called `Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me'.''

Meanwhile, "Second Sight'' is ripe for a sequel. Owen will star in three more Tanner telefilms, to start shooting this spring.

Will Tanner recover? Will he still need to rely on Tully? Does she care a whit about him?

"We've had discussions,'' Owen said. ``I think -- and it's only my opinion -- that the way forward is to make it as hard as possible for Tanner. The audience will relate to his isolation. I think it's best to throw things very hard at him.

"Of course, it's all still open. And you do have to start addressing credibility.

"Usually I'm very concerned about keeping scripts absolutely credible. But I've always thought of `Second Sight' as being quite out-there anyway -- as being kind of ''60s, not so entrenched in realism. So it doesn't concern me so much.''