I've just shot this crazy action movie with Monica Bellucci in Toronto called Shoot 'Em Up, " he says. I promise you won't have seen anything quite like it. It starts with a man delivering a baby in an alley in the middle of a gun fight. The mother of the baby gets it. He ends up with the baby and everyone after this baby. So he picks up with a lactating hooker.

What follows is one incredible shoot out after another but it's so wildly ingenious that when you think they're never going to get out of a situation he finds a crazy way to do it."

So there he was with Hannah and Eve on the set. ?What's it about, daddy?" ?Oh it's such a silly film. . ." Why are you shooting all those guns?" ?Oh, they're not real, darling. We're just playing around."

The only time they've actually seen him on screen is in King Arthur. They'd been nagging me for a while. Some of their schoolfriends had seen it. So I brought them over Christmas. But that's about it. Closer? I don't think so."

He does most of his filming in the summer. That way the girls can come. They don't miss school." Last summer it was Spike Lee's heist thriller Inside Man. ?They saw the mask I wear and the bank I rob, and they met Spike."

Owen doesn't particularly like watching his movies, either. I only see them once, I'm a little bit of a squirmer. I'm never happy. When I saw Sin City it was as if someone else was in it. All my scenes were done on green screen, so I'd no idea how it would all look in the end. It's not good to be self-conscious as an actor.

Occasionally you see actors judging themselves as they're doing it. That's really unhealthy."

Spike Lee wooed him for Inside Man by taking him to a Knicks basketball match.

?It turns out he's a great soccer fan. He's an Arsenal supporter. He knows Thierry Henry. He's coming over for the World Cup this summer."

Owen makes an uncredited appearance in The Pink Panther as an undercover agent 006. It's just a joke, " says Owen, who was regarded as a front runner to succeed Pierce Brosnan as James Bond . . . despite his constant disclaimers that he had absolutely no interest in the role. He thinks Daniel Craig will be great as Bond.

He's having a rough ride at the moment, which is totally out of hand because he's a really fine actor. I think it will all quieten down once the film comes out."

Since The Croupier, in which he played a writer turned casino employee who gets in over his head, 37-year-old Owen . . .a working class kid from Coventry" . . . has been on a roll. I'm having the time of my life, " he says.

He's resisted the pressure to move to Los Angeles with his wife Sarah . . . they met playing Romeo and Juliet at the Young Vic . . . and the girls.

My girls are firmly set in school in London. Everyone assumes that Hollywood is the place where they make all the movies. They make movies everywhere.

I'd move my family to LA and I'd never be there. They'd be like, what are we doing here?

You go where the films are. The last few have been in Canada, New York and London. The work can be anywhere. The industry is based in Hollywood, yeah.

That's where the studios are based. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be working there."

He's getting to the point where he'll do a children's movie just so his daughters can get to watch him on screen. They're getting annoyed with me, " he says.

So what will it be . . . a Harry Potter movie? Lord, no. Maybe I'll do a deal with Robert Rodriguez."

'The Inside Man' is currently on release