Clive Owen is doing the full media blitz to promote his film The International, out in America on Friday. He’s doing television shows (Conan O’Brien last night, “The View” on Friday!) and sitting down for some newspaper interviews. Can this man get a GQ cover? Or Esquire? Or are the men’s magazine covers only devoted to half-naked women these days?

Clive sat down with USA Today and talked about his film, and a lot of the same quotes came up from his Berlin promotional duties. But he did finally manage to give away a little personal nugget of information. His daughters Eve (9 years old) and Hannah (11 years old) are obsessed with Jennifer Aniston and all things “Friends”. His daughters are so obsessed that they’ve tried to persuade their dad to call up his Derailed co-star so that they can talk to her. USA Today has more:

The actor’s daughters, Hannah, 12, and Eve, 9, have finally figured out what their father does for a living, even though they’re not allowed to see any of his very R-rated films. And they’re trying to benefit from it.

“Weirdly, they’ve become obsessed by Friends. My oldest daughter is obsessed, and she knows I worked with Jennifer Aniston (in 2005’s Derailed), so she’s like, ‘Call her up, call her up,’ ” Owen says with a smile. “I’m not calling her up. What are you going to say to her? They hit me up for weird things like that.”

Not that he minds. His International co-star Naomi Watts says he’s “very much a family man — he never stops talking about his daughters and wife.”

From USA Today

“Weirdly” – I like that. Like Clive Owen has no idea what the appeal is. Someone who gets Clive’s appeal, however, is Julia Roberts. Even though their film together, Duplicity, doesn’t come out for another six weeks, Julia just had to comment about her number one crush. Julia says that Clive is “a hell of a lot of fun to spend time with.” Yeah, we know, Julia. Don’t rub it in. Naomi Watts also chimed in about Clive, saying that he’s “not too groovy or too sexy”, which is a compliment?

[On] March 20, [Clive Owen] reunites with his Closer co-star Roberts in Duplicity, a sexy tale of two secret agents with one diabolical plan.

Roberts calls Owen “one of those rare individuals. He is perfectly balanced in life and career. He is also a hell of a lot of fun to spend time with.”

He signed on to do The International to work with Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), who calls Owen “the thinking man’s action hero. He is physically impressive, but he can still show that he’s vulnerable.”

Owen, Watts says, makes the hyper-intense Salinger real: “Clive is a big, tall, good-looking man. But he’s not too groovy or too sexy. You relate to him.”

In Duplicity, written and directed by Michael Clayton’s Tony Gilroy, Owen plays Salinger’s opposite: a smooth-talking scammer.

“I’d been reading a lot and hadn’t been interested in much. When that happens, I start to think it’s me, that I’m being too choosy. And then you read a great script and think, ‘That’s why,’ ” he says. “No. 1 on our wish list was Julia.”

She read the script and called Owen. “She says, ‘We should do this one, Clive.’ I had such a great time with her (on Closer), even though it looked very serious. We got on very well, we trusted each other. This is now perfect.”

From USA Today

You can bet that Julia Roberts was just trolling around for any script just to get a chance to work with Clive again. I wonder if Danny Moder got jealous? As many have commented, Julia and Clive didn’t really have that much chemistry in Closer. Even though Clive could have chemistry with tree bark, I think Julia was terribly miscast in that film. It seems like she was probably miscast in this Duplicity as well, considering most audiences don’t really care when she does dramas. There’s a possibility that Duplicity will be promoted as if it’s a romantic comedy, just to lure in Julia’s die-hard rom-com fans, so watch out!

Photos are of Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston in 2005’s Derailed. Credit: Allmoviephoto.