Burn Gorman (Owen Harper)
Owen Harper is Torchwood’s scientist and medic. He is brilliant, charming, can be arrogant, thoughtless and insolent, which sometimes leads him into confrontations with the other members of the team.
Chasing aliens and investigating weird and wonderful life forms for a living may be a tiring business, but the bags viewers will see under Torchwood medic Owen’s eyes are most definitely not the work of the show’s make-up artists. Halfway through filming the series, actor Burn Gorman’s wife, Sarah, gave birth to their first child, Max, leaving Burn with sleepless nights aplenty.
“We’re through the worst now though,” laughs Burn. “There were a few times when I thought, I’m going to fall asleep. You’ll notice that in episodes three and four I’ve got bags under my eyes that look like satchels! Some nights we’ve been working 13 or 14 hours but you just get the energy to wake up for your children. He’s the best thing that’s happened to us, he’s such a little cutie,” adds the doting dad.
Being up all hours may make Owen’s job seem like child’s’ play, but it’s serious work being Torchwood’s medic: “Owen has got the best job in the world. He is a quick-witted lad who is a trained doctor who worked in Cardiff A&E. One day, he was headhunted by a 21st-century alien crime-fighting team as a medic. How do you say no to that? You get a gun, you get to drive fast cars and you get to chase aliens. Owen is living the dream, without a doubt.”
Helping him live that dream is Torchwood’s dynamic leader, Captain Jack (played by John Barrowman), who inspires his team and offers knowledge and advice whenever he can. “Owen has a great amount of admiration for Captain Jack, who is, without doubt, the boss. In a sense, in this strange world that Owen has been brought into, he looks up to Jack as a beacon of guidance. If you can imagine some of the stuff he is seeing … it would blow your mind. But with Jack … he’s somebody who you just know tells the truth, no messing about. So Owen looks up to Jack as a mentor, if not as an uncle figure.”
Owen’s role, as well as being Torchwood’s doctor, is to assess alien technology to see if it can be used by the team: “He has to keep an eye on alien life forms, whether that be plants, the aliens that come in to Torchwood or are held at Torchwood in one way or another. Owen investigates what these alien life forms and the technology they bring with them can add to our life in the 21st Century.”
It sounds like the stuff of boyhood dreams and for sci-fi fan Burn it’s just the icing on the cake in a career that has seen his success build from a small part in Coronation Street in 1998, when he was fresh out of drama school, to a role in the crime thriller movie Layer Cake in 2004 and then the part of the bumbling legal clerk Guppy in BBC One’s riveting adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House last year. Burn will also soon be seen as slimy reporter Larry in the film Penelope, a “modern fairy tale” starring Christina Ricci and Reese Witherspoon.
“I’m obsessed by sci-fi,” says Burn. “The only time I’ve ever been star struck was when I met the actor who played [Star Wars’] Boba Fett,” he laughs. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a normal sci-fi show unless it was something unusual, and Torchwood is extraordinary. It is one of the most ambitious, exciting television series I’ve ever been involved in. The marriage of science fiction and crime drama based on Earth I don’t think has ever been done before. The set will blow your mind. It’s like the Bat Cave times 100, it’s just extraordinary. It’s not every day you shoot an alien after breakfast, get snogged by a huge Welshman before lunch and resuscitate Blake’s 7 before dinner! It’s literally the job of a lifetime.”
Burn has also thoroughly enjoyed spending time in Cardiff, where Torchwood is filmed. “I brought my wife here and my son was born in Cardiff. We’ve loved it here, the people, the countryside, the surfing, the restaurants, the atmosphere, we don’t want to leave.” He also reveals that his love of Wales goes back a lot further than filming for Torchwood: “I’ve always held Wales very close to my heart after I had my first snog in Bala at the age of eight,” laughs the 32-year-old actor.
The way things have been going in Torchwood, it seems that Burn could add another few to his list of snogs in Wales, as, on top of all the crime-busting and alien chasing, Owen is also involved in some of the drama’s more raunchy scenes, not that Burn is letting on who Owen has romantic entanglements with: “He’s a 21st-century bloke with lots of demons to get out of his system, so he tries his luck.
“Without being too specific there’s a lot of snogging that goes on! In Owen’s job every day could be his last, it’s like a war-time mentality. And you know what happened in the war! People didn’t know if they’d still be here the next day, so if you’ve got the opportunity to get it on with someone you’re going to do it. Owen takes those chances. He’s also a sensible lad, he’s not an idiot. If he likes someone, he’s going to go for it. But, unfortunately, he’s not averse to breaking the rules in terms of making advances on people who have long-term partners. He’s just living for the moment.”
“We’re through the worst now though,” laughs Burn. “There were a few times when I thought, I’m going to fall asleep. You’ll notice that in episodes three and four I’ve got bags under my eyes that look like satchels! Some nights we’ve been working 13 or 14 hours but you just get the energy to wake up for your children. He’s the best thing that’s happened to us, he’s such a little cutie,” adds the doting dad.
Being up all hours may make Owen’s job seem like child’s’ play, but it’s serious work being Torchwood’s medic: “Owen has got the best job in the world. He is a quick-witted lad who is a trained doctor who worked in Cardiff A&E. One day, he was headhunted by a 21st-century alien crime-fighting team as a medic. How do you say no to that? You get a gun, you get to drive fast cars and you get to chase aliens. Owen is living the dream, without a doubt.”
Helping him live that dream is Torchwood’s dynamic leader, Captain Jack (played by John Barrowman), who inspires his team and offers knowledge and advice whenever he can. “Owen has a great amount of admiration for Captain Jack, who is, without doubt, the boss. In a sense, in this strange world that Owen has been brought into, he looks up to Jack as a beacon of guidance. If you can imagine some of the stuff he is seeing … it would blow your mind. But with Jack … he’s somebody who you just know tells the truth, no messing about. So Owen looks up to Jack as a mentor, if not as an uncle figure.”
Owen’s role, as well as being Torchwood’s doctor, is to assess alien technology to see if it can be used by the team: “He has to keep an eye on alien life forms, whether that be plants, the aliens that come in to Torchwood or are held at Torchwood in one way or another. Owen investigates what these alien life forms and the technology they bring with them can add to our life in the 21st Century.”
It sounds like the stuff of boyhood dreams and for sci-fi fan Burn it’s just the icing on the cake in a career that has seen his success build from a small part in Coronation Street in 1998, when he was fresh out of drama school, to a role in the crime thriller movie Layer Cake in 2004 and then the part of the bumbling legal clerk Guppy in BBC One’s riveting adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House last year. Burn will also soon be seen as slimy reporter Larry in the film Penelope, a “modern fairy tale” starring Christina Ricci and Reese Witherspoon.
“I’m obsessed by sci-fi,” says Burn. “The only time I’ve ever been star struck was when I met the actor who played [Star Wars’] Boba Fett,” he laughs. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a normal sci-fi show unless it was something unusual, and Torchwood is extraordinary. It is one of the most ambitious, exciting television series I’ve ever been involved in. The marriage of science fiction and crime drama based on Earth I don’t think has ever been done before. The set will blow your mind. It’s like the Bat Cave times 100, it’s just extraordinary. It’s not every day you shoot an alien after breakfast, get snogged by a huge Welshman before lunch and resuscitate Blake’s 7 before dinner! It’s literally the job of a lifetime.”
Burn has also thoroughly enjoyed spending time in Cardiff, where Torchwood is filmed. “I brought my wife here and my son was born in Cardiff. We’ve loved it here, the people, the countryside, the surfing, the restaurants, the atmosphere, we don’t want to leave.” He also reveals that his love of Wales goes back a lot further than filming for Torchwood: “I’ve always held Wales very close to my heart after I had my first snog in Bala at the age of eight,” laughs the 32-year-old actor.
The way things have been going in Torchwood, it seems that Burn could add another few to his list of snogs in Wales, as, on top of all the crime-busting and alien chasing, Owen is also involved in some of the drama’s more raunchy scenes, not that Burn is letting on who Owen has romantic entanglements with: “He’s a 21st-century bloke with lots of demons to get out of his system, so he tries his luck.
“Without being too specific there’s a lot of snogging that goes on! In Owen’s job every day could be his last, it’s like a war-time mentality. And you know what happened in the war! People didn’t know if they’d still be here the next day, so if you’ve got the opportunity to get it on with someone you’re going to do it. Owen takes those chances. He’s also a sensible lad, he’s not an idiot. If he likes someone, he’s going to go for it. But, unfortunately, he’s not averse to breaking the rules in terms of making advances on people who have long-term partners. He’s just living for the moment.”
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