Owen Wilson enjoyed playing a protective parent in new movie 'No Escape'.

The 46-year-old actor - who has kids Robert Ford Wilson, 4 and 12-month old Finn Lindqvist Wilson from two relationships - plays a father trying to get his family to safety during a political uprising and says he wanted to take the part when he read he would be a father taking his kids out of harm's way.

He said: ''Within the first ten or fifteen pages, the riot breaks out and he's running to grab his kid out of the pool and it just seemed like an exciting story for me.''

He went on: ''The thing that attracted me to the script was that it didn't feel too action-y. I [wasn't] all of a sudden going to jump into a fighter jet or pick up a grenade launcher and expertly use it. It felt grounded in believability. The biggest thing was being a parent and the feeling that when put in a situation to protect your kids, [the parent] is capable of anything''

The movie sees Owen's character become an action hero, but he says he was chosen for the part because he is ''believable'' a regular guy.

He told Collider: ''I've obviously worked on more comedies over the years, but what they believed is that I could possibly help the story in the beginning. You get lulled into a thing of 'okay, there's this kid joking around, this feels very familiar', and then all of a sudden you pull the rug out from under my character and the audience.''