Clive Owen is as unflappable in person as the cool and calm persona he projects on screen. The dapper British actor was all charm and smiles during a recent chat about his new thriller, “Intruders,” in which he plays a father trying to protect his family from a mysterious visitor (Hollow Face) who invades their home. But he was quick to admit the one thing that does unsettle him: Worrying about his two daughters.

“What scares me is, without a doubt, the welfare and well-being of my children,” he says with a hint of concern. “Worrying about if they are OK or all right — the things you don’t have much control over.”

But what doesn’t keep him up at night is portraying a parent in a movie. “It’s interesting to explore parenting in film; to do it in a truthful way is something very exciting to discover,” he says, noting it’s especially challenging when you’re portraying a parent trying to protect their child like he does in “Intruders.”

“You have to take the audience to quite an intense place [with just a look]. It’s as hard as doing a page of dialogue,” he says. “If you fall short, it just doesn’t work. You have to get to a place of intensity.”

‘The Exorcist’ and parenting

One other thing that scares Clive Owen? “The Exorcist.” “It’s extremely well-acted and even holds up today,” he says about the movie. “My 12-year-old daughter has heard about it and is like, ‘Dad, I want to watch ‘The Exorcist.'” And I’m like, ‘Sweetheart, you’re not watching that for 10 more years.'”