Clive Owen strides into the room meaning business. Decked in a grey suit and blue open-necked shirt, he seems groomed enough for a movie star, but retains just enough ruggedness and normality to pass for one of us regular folk.

In another life, he could even pass for a city banker. Perhaps it is this duality that causes women to drift into a dream-like state at the very mention of his name.

The smile is a giveaway, however. Those pearly white teeth are a legacy of Hollywood. You certainly wouldn't find them on the streets of Coventry, where Owen was raised and struggled as an out-of-work actor while Thatcher's Britain imploded around him. With strikes and unemployment decimating the UK, Owen and many of his friends found themselves on the dole queue while his peers The Specials sang Ghost Town about their native city.

It's been far from a textbook ride from unemployment in Coventry to superstardom in Hollywood, but Owen has made it. He has two new movies on the horizon, which make 2009 a big year for the 44-year-old. Duplicity sees Owen once again team up with Julia Roberts in Tony Gilroy's directorial follow-up to Michael Clayton.

Before that Owen will star in The International, a stripped-down action thriller along the lines of Seventies films like The Conversation and The French Connection. The difference is that The International focuses on the banking industry and how it uses the money it holds.

It's entirely accidental that the film has landed at this exact moment, but accidents are the stuff of marketing men's dreams and so it is being touted as 'the first credit-crunch movie' complete with the tagline: "They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays."

"It's become hugely topical since we shot the film," Owen explains. "You would think it has been made on the back of recent things, but we shot it a year ago. Extraordinary things have happened in the past year. I think people have really woken up and started to think where is their money, how is it being used and who is using it?"

While Owen's character, Interpol agent Louis Salinger, is singular in his devotion to the pursuit of the evil empire, his colleague Eleanor (Naomi Watts) is forced to take a back seat as family commitments prevent her from moving into dangerous territories.

It throws up an interesting analogy with Owen's life. He met his wife Sarah-Jane Fenton in his early twenties when they played the title roles in a Rada production of Romeo and Juliet. When they had children 10 years later, Fenton put her career on hold to be a full-time mother, allowing Owen the freedom to pursue his own opportunities.

I ask him if there have been moments when, like Watts' character in The International, he has been forced to tailor his career as family considerations come into play?

"Amazingly, no," he answers. "I give all credit and thanks to my wife Sarah-Jane for that. She has always given me the freedom to go and do that. I can honestly say I've never chosen a film because where it's shot is convenient. I've just been in Australia for three months. But it's very tough -- it's tough for me; it's tough for the kids.

"But I make sure there's a balance to it. I make sure that if I'm off doing a film that then there's time off afterwards. But all that juggling is made very easy because Sarah-Jane is so cool and gives me the space and the freedom.

"She has maybe once in my entire career at some point called and said: 'You need to stop and take some time off. You've been away too much'. I listened to her straight away and did that straight away. But ultimately she is the one who keeps the family together and gives me the support and the freedom so I've never felt constricted or felt I have to choose or not do something because of family commitments."

It's rare for any relationship to work in the kind of circles Owen is now part of, let alone one that existed before one half of it became famous. Though Owen admits that he's "a little obsessive" about his work, he doesn't appear to go in for any of the trappings that go hand-in-hand with stardom, meaning that when he's not working his family and marriage is the focus of all his attention.

"I think Sarah-Jane and I work at it, but ultimately I give most of the credit to her. She keeps it all together. I feel I have everything. I have a very solid, lovely family life and I go off and I make movies and completely fulfil that part of my life too. I never take that for granted. I appreciate that and understand what a gift it is, but most of the credit is hers. I picked a good one."

Since making his breakthrough in Croupier, that work has led Owen to appear in films such as Robert Altman's Gosford Park, to play the title role in King Arthur (which was shot in Ireland), earn an Oscar nomination for Patrick Marber's Closer, star in Sin City and Children of Men and play Sir Walter Raleigh in Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

As we talk he admits he's suffering from jet-lag having just returned from three months in Australia shooting The Boys are Back, a story of a single father made by Shine director Scott Hicks (he also retains the deep tan, something else which separates him from the pasty white skin currently sported by bankers).

Sarah-Jane and their two daughters, Hannah, 12, and Eve, nine, came out to visit him during the school holidays. Owen is an avid Liverpool fan, insisting on having sports channels piped into his trailer wherever in the world he's filming. He admits being "very intimidated" by singer David Bowie and Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard. "I can meet any actor but not those two."

As a treat, his daughters wore Liverpool shirts when they came to meet him but aside from that touching gesture he claims they see their dad as a figure of fun. "They always laugh at me. They don't take me seriously in the slightest. They think I'm a joke."

Despite what his children may think, Owen's career is now taken very seriously indeed by the powers that be. Less preening than Jude Law and more personable than Daniel Craig, Owen was strongly tipped to get the role of James Bond when Pierce Brosnan departed.

That he didn't get it allowed him to take roles like The International. He would make a good Bond, however, appearing as he does on every 'best dressed' and 'sexiest man alive' lists whenever they're compiled. What does he think of such praise? "My 12-year-old girl had one of her friends go up to her with some magazine and go 'Ugghhh. Your Dad's on this list. It's so weird'. I pretty much feel the same."

The International is in cinemas nationwide

- Evan Fanning