HOLLYWOOD -- As Clive Owen discovered playing a king can be a royal pain in the butt.
In King Arthur, Jerry Bruckheimer's epic retelling of the Arthurian legend, Owen plays Lucius Artorius Castus a fifth-century Roman mercenary who successfully united the warring tribe of ancient Britain to prevent an invasion by the Saxon hordes.
Owen was so eager to play the man who inspired Arthurian myths and legends that have occupied literature for for more than 15 centuries, he neglected to tell Bruckheimer a small detail.
Owen had a fear of horses.
"I'd ridden a few times for films, but never very well and there was the one time I had a very scary experience," says Owen recalling he had been "put on a horse that was way out of my league.
"I learned in the worst possible way that horses can be powerful and dangerous. I got thrown."
Bruckheimer -- who had been impressed with Owen's performances in such films as Croupier, The Bourne Identity and Gosford Park -- was determined to have the 39-year-old Brit play Arthur.
Rumours abounded that Owen was being courted to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond so Bruckheimer made a firm offer to tie Owen up for seven months. "As soon as I read the script for King Arthur, I realized for at least 60 percent of the movie I would be on a damned horse. All during the negotiation period, I was in complete denial when I was talking to Jerry and (director) Antoine Fuqua. It's absolutely true that literally the day we all signed the contracts I told Jerry that I had to get on a horse the next day."
'NOT THE PRETTIFIED WORLD OF CAMELOT'
Fortunately for Owen, he was not needed in Ireland for two months. "Jerry was signing horses up from Spain at the same time he was signing up the actors, so everybody already knew which horse would be mine and it was one big horse.
"Jerry put me in touch with one of the guys who was hired to do the training for the film."
Owen says he walked into the stables two days later and demanded the horse trainer treat him like a complete novice.
"I saw this little fat horse that looked almost like a donkey. I told him that was the one I wanted to begin on and that's where we started."
Owen says as the weeks went by he'd walk in for riding lessons and discover he'd been "upgraded to a larger horse and then a larger one until I was on the horse they'd assigned to Arthur."
Owen was eager to demonstrate his riding skills only to discover "a great deal of the action has me leading the knights through fire and smoke or steep hills and narrow paths."
The end result of almost nine months of being on a horse is that Owen is now "pretty fearless. I would never say I'm a great horseman, but I am completely relaxed and unafraid."
Now Owen, his wife and two children have a new hobby.
"We go riding as a family on weekends. We're turning into real horse people."
Owen says when he first read David Franzoni's screenplay for King Arthur he was struck by "how crazy and turbulent those times were. The Roman Empire was collapsing, so they were pulling their troops out of Britain leaving the country ripe for chaos. The Saxons thought they had easy pickings.
"I think it's great that we're giving people a unique version and not just recycling something they've seen before. I like that Antoine shows how Arthur's world was a really dangerous, scary place. That's what stuck with me when I saw Antoine's cut of our movie ... That's the world Arthur and his knight found themselves in. It's certainly not the prettified world of Camelot."
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