I think this interview from earlier this year in a british paper says it pretty well
Also I hadn't seen it before so I'll pop it up in case any of you haven't!
Byline: JOHN MILLAR
Hollywood really can't abide cleverness, despite all those suits, publicists and personal managers who love to throw around the word 'genius.'
In fact - overt intelligence is often punished. Think of the career of Orson Welles.
Which is why highbrows in LaLa Land invariably adopt camouflage. Warren Beatty, for instance, paraded as a traditional stud before coming out as the thoughtful writer/ director/producer of Reds and Bulworth. Woody Allen played the fool and kept his burning desire to be the next Ingmar Bergman to himself. Even Kevin Spacey isn't keen to exploit his learning. A mass medium demands the common touch. You have to play the game.
Which brings us to Owen Wilson and a suite at the Dorchester Hotel. The 34-year-old actor has flown into town to promote Shanghai Knights, the sequel to the hit slapstick western Shanghai Noon, in which he shared top billing with Jackie Chan as a sort of cowboy surfer dude.
Not that Wilson needs to be incongruous to stand out. Laid-back, lanky and easy on the eye, Wilson never quite blends into the background.
He steals scenes without trying - as Ben Stiller discovered in both Meet The Parents and Zoolander - and yet he never seems to be quite all therewhile he's doing it. Films such as Knights andNoon, Meet The Parents and I Spy present the public face of a hot new star - a face with a broken nose, reputed to drive teenage girls wild. Those girls like to read about their wild boy getting jiggy with it at strip clubs with his actor brother Luke Wilson but don't much care about - or for - their pinup's other side: the closet intellectual who co-wrote the cult classic Rushmore with his old college chum, the director Wes Anderson, topping that quirky triumph with the Oscar-nominated The Royal Tenenbaums. The pair have been working together since their edgy indie short, Bottle Rocket, exploded at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and you have to wonder how the famously fastidious Anderson might view some of his creative partner's less creative choices. I mean, what's a guy who quotes Rimbaud doing in The Haunting?
'I know Wes likes Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights,' Wilson says in his soft lugubrious drawl. A shrug greets the suggestion that he might be using the action flicks and commercial comedies to finance more personal work.
'People talk about how these films that I've done with Jackie Chan are different from the films with Wes but I think that in important ways there are similarities.' How so? 'I know that Jackie's character has a sense of innocence and that his comedy isn't meanspirited or cruel. I would say that is also true in the Tenenbaums and Rushmore.' Anything else he has in common with the highkicking hero? Wilson tugs his long blond locks back with both hands. 'Well, Jackie describes himself as being a shy individual who has to be taken out of his shell and, yeah, we share that.' Indeed. Ask Wilson about his well-publicised romance with singer Sheryl Crow and there's the merest flash of trademark cocky grin before he - apologetically and charmingly - clams up.
As a reigning Lothario, he wants to maintain his mystery for the next supermodel and he's obviously learned from the media roasting his Romeo brother Luke endured dating Gwyneth Paltrow. 'Look, you're talking to someone who can't even watch himself on screen. I just get very critical and can't judge what I'm doing objectively.' Which is awfully sensitive for a man who impersonated a fighter pilot trapped in a war zone in Behind Enemy Lines.
He won't volunteer much information about his past either, though that past explains his essential dichotomy. Father Robert Wilson was a sensible advertising executive, while mother Laura was a very artistic photographer.
Owen and his siblings Luke and Andrew (also an actor) have managed to merge the best traits of both, but for a time the middle son's adolescence was troubled. When he was expelled from elite Dallas school St Mark's Academy - for cheating in a geometry exam - Owen's distraught parents packed him off to a military academy in Roswell, New Mexico - where he didn't feel alien but fitted right in. Not on the marching ground, however, but editing the literary magazine.
Writing got Wilson back on track.
Stardom wasn't his dream - he never meant to be a rival to his brothers.
That's why he penned parts for Luke in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Wilson insists that he and Luke aren't considered for the same roles - usually.
'We are different in the stuff that we do. We are different looking.' The family remains tight.
Luke and Owen share a Santa Monica home.
'And my dad's with me,' Wilson offers, nodding towards the door. 'We're seeing the sights.' He doesn't mean showbiz destinations. He hasn't done the Ivy or Home House. 'I'm a big Winston Churchill fan. I went to his bunker and the War Room and heard the tapes of the addresses he made during World War II. No, I don't know why I have this thing about Churchill, but I did manage to sneak a portrait of him in behind the headmaster in Rushmore.' Don't expect a sequel to that offbeat masterpiece any time soon. Despite I Spy underperforming, Wilson's next project is a remake of the Seventies cop show Starsky And Hutch. He'll be Hutch and Ben Stiller - a friend since they met on The Cable Guy - will be Starsky. Wilson says he's heard the show's original star, David Soul, is irritated by the news. 'He says Ben and me are OK, but let's face it, we are are not really Starsky and Hutch.
Starsky and Hutch are him and Paul Michael Glaser. Hopefully he'll come around to the idea.' Owen Wilson politely manages to keep a straight face.
Terribly useful when you're brighter than most and playing the game.
Shanghai Knights opens Fri 4 Apr.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Solo Syndication Limited