Clive Owen

Born: 1965
Where: Coventry, Warwickshire

The actor has made steady progress towards the A-list thanks to Mike Hodges' sleeper hit Croupier and the medieval action drama King Arthur.

He has also recently stunned critics with his Oscar nominated part in a complex love quadrangle in Closer, alongside Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Natalie Portman.

As a schoolboy Owen joined a local youth theatre where his scene-stealing Artful Dodger in Oliver set him on the road to stardom.

After a RADA education, Owen made his professional stage debut at the Young Vic.

His feature film debut came in 1988 in Vroom, opposite Diana Quick and David Thewliss, and the following year he was already creating a presence for himself on the American screen.

His next big screen outing was Close My Eyes in which he played a brother with incestuous desires for his sister (Saskia Reeves).

The controversial role led to the withdrawal of film offers and he returned to the stage - in Noel Coward's Design for Living and Patrick Marber's Closer - now a film.

Owen courted controversy again in Bent as a homosexual in decadent pre-war Germany who finds love in a Nazi internment camp.

He was then cast in the title role in Mike Hodges' Croupier, an atmospheric film which became a popular art-house hit, particularly in the States.

Other parts followed, including Gosford Park, The Bourne Identity, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, and Closer.