Overview
Marcus Richard Lloyd Owen (born 14 April 1966) is an English actor. Trained at the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, he is known for portraying Indiana Jones's father Professor Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles between 1992 and 1993 and Paul Bowman-MacDonald in the BBC Scotland series Monarch of the Glen from 2002 to 2005. He starred as solicitor William Heelis in the film Miss Potter (2006) and commander Nathan Walker in Apollo 18 (2011). He plays the role of Elendil in the Amazon Prime fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022).
Early life
Owen was born on 14 April 1966 at the Charing Cross Hospital in Westminster, London, England. He was brought up in London, although both of his parents were Welsh – his father, actor Glyn Owen (1928–2004), was from Caernarfon, Gwynedd, in north-west Wales, while his mother, actress Patricia Mort, was from Morriston in Swansea, Wales. His sister is the actress Cathy Owen (b. 1968).
Owen said he grew up around "a mob of entertaining, troublesome, fascinating" actors involved in challenging the Lord Chamberlain during some of the most exciting days of a very controversial Royal Court Theatre. When he was at Highgate School, because his father was an actor, his teachers thought that he should be able to act, too. However, at first he was not interested. "I was always made to read plays at school but I never wanted to. Then I was made to take part in a school play and I didn't want to do that either but I started to get approval for my acting. I was reasonably academic, good at sport, but somehow with the acting, people said 'that was fantastic'. So I thought, 'maybe that's what I'll do then".
At 16, Owen went straight from school to the National Youth Theatre, and subsequently received formal training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, after which he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. While at RADA he managed to get an acting job and an Equity card, but when he told the principal he needed a term off, the request was denied and he was expelled from the Academy after just a year. Fortunately, Owen landed a job with Cheek by Jowl and followed the theatre company on tour around the world performing Shakespeare plays. Owen has said that he wished he had gone to university, and that he had been "in too much of a rush".
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