Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘The Fountain of Youth.’

Summary

In an interview with Collider, Domhnall Gleeson reveals how his character in Fountain of Youth reflects the darker side of power and greed.

Owen’s downfall stems from his inability to learn from those around him.

As he shares, the irony of Owen’s death highlights his unquenchable thirst for power, portrayed subtly throughout the film.

Domhnall Gleeson might be a tech-billionaire with a terminal diagnosis and an overzealous lust for eternal life in Fountain of Youth, but don’t expect him to be the average power-hungry villain. In the Guy Ritchie blockbuster now available to stream on Apple TV+, Gleeson’s Owen Carver is seemingly all charm and quirk on the surface — even sharing a tender moment with the film’s youngest star and Natalie Portman’s on-screen son, Thomas (Benjamin Chivers). But as we learn from the film’s biggest twists and turns, his real motivations come into clear view during the film’s final act.
Getting deep into spoiler territory with Collider, Gleeson speaks about Owen’s descent into madness, the irony of his demise, and how the billionaire’s wealth — even down to his dual-faced luxury watch — mirrors so much of his rooted duplicity (“Nobody gave it to me at the end of the movie, which I think is a disgrace,” Gleeson jokes, still mourning the loss of a $150,000 prop). But as he shares details from the set of the nearly two-hour action-adventure, he also gets candid about what Owen’s downfall says about power, ego, and the inability to truly connect.
Why Does Owen Drink From the ‘Fountain of Youth’?

“He’s just used to getting what he wants.”

Image via Apple TV+

While Owen begins as a charismatic, terminally ill tech billionaire bankrolling an ancient treasure hunt, that all changes when we see his true colors come to the surface. Having tasked John Krasinski’s Luke to find the mythical wonder alongside his sister, Charlotte (Portman), and friends (including Laz Alonso and Carmen Ejogo), Owen ultimately decides to drink from the fountain himself. But in a shocking turn of events, he dies just seconds later — a moment that mirrors the iconic twists of Indiana Jones.
For Gleeson, the real power of Owen wasn’t just in the shock twist that his character was the film’s secret antagonist all along, but in how his character serves as a darker, real-world reflection of greed and obsession. “He’s just used to getting what he wants,” Gleeson says. “He’s just going about getting what he wants any way that he can, and he doesn’t see that as a bad thing. I imagine audiences will feel differently.”

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That moral blind spot is what really makes Owen’s arc feel a lot more inevitable. The big twist — that he orchestrated betrayals and sacrifices under the guise of financing a global expedition — is, as Gleeson sees it, the natural endpoint for someone who never listens. “There’s no one for him to learn from, so he’s got nothing to learn, and so he makes mistakes that are his undoing.”
As audiences will see, even Owen’s final words are a gut-punch to the villain who could have turned had he been humbled by his circumstances. After dismissing the risks and ignoring the warnings from Luke, he drinks from the fountain, which immortalizes those who drink from it by using the lives of those they love. But with Owen having no one to love, he dies instantly.
“I guess it shows the difference between people who learn from the people around them, and people who don’t,” Gleeson says, contrasting Owen with Krasinski’s character. “[Luke’s] journey is that by the end, he learns to listen to his sister. He learns to have an equal relationship with somebody. I think somebody in Owen’s shoes will never, ever listen to anybody unless he thinks they’re more powerful than him.”
The Irony of Owen Carver’s Death in ‘Fountain of Youth’

“His thirst for power is unquenchable.”

Image via Apple TV+

Though Owen’s death is a major part of the film’s climax, Gleeson says those shades of villainy are embedded in just about everything the character says and does from the start. “The fact that at the end, his undoing is there at the beginning of the story — the fact that his thirst for power is unquenchable — that that comes back to bite him in the ass. I liked that.”
One of the best things Ritchie does for Owen in Fountain of Youth is not painting him as a cartoonish villain. In fact, Gleeson said Ritchie intentionally steered away from obvious billionaire clichés that we so often poke fun at as a society. “He didn’t want to go down any of the routes that would be obvious with the billionaire maniac,” Gleeson says. “He actually wanted him to be persuasive and interesting and quite likable, even if a little bit odd… so that at the end it feels like a genuine betrayal.”
This Little Detail Was Foreshadowing Owen’s Villain Role in ‘Fountain of Youth’ All Along

One scene that paints Owen’s warped worldview is the conversation he has with Charlotte’s son, Thomas. When the young boy asks, “How much is enough?”, he reveals he’s never satisfied — a subtle yet devastating detail revealing Owen’s innate emptiness. This fragment plays into the small moments behind the scenes, which were just as crucial in shaping the character on-screen. But as he tells us, one of his favorite days involved filming that very scene with Benjamin, and what made it even more memorable was that the scene had been rewritten just before the shoot.
“Guy was on set, he was changing the script. He gave us whole new pages right before we shot. Seeing him change up the rhythms, working with both of us really closely, I also loved that,” he says. “It ended up being that the scene is exactly the same in lots of ways, except that the words are different, which he changed. That back and forth, I really enjoyed because I got to see him up close and personal.”
As he shares, even Owen’s costumes reflected so many of his character’s contradictions. Gleeson reveals he wore a reversible $150,000 watch with two sides — a metaphor, he admits, no one but him may notice. “I love the fact that his watch had two faces. I don’t think the audience ever sees that, but I just love that.”
There was also an Irish symbol stitched onto Owen’s clothes, as the actor shares. “He has a little Fournier in the last few scenes, which is a symbol that he speaks the Irish language,” Gleeson says. “I don’t think he speaks the Irish language. I think he just wants to look like he does and look like he’s cultured, and actually, he’s got nothing behind it.”
Watch more from this interview above, including what it was like working with Krasinski, Portman, and Ritchie. Fountain of Youth is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Fountain of Youth

Release Date

May 23, 2025

Runtime

125 minutes

Writers

James Vanderbilt

Producers

Jake Myers, William Sherak, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don Granger, Tripp Vinson, Ivan Atkinson