Clive Rowe was born in Shaw, Greather Manchester. He began acting when he was 14 with Playhouse Two in Shaw as well as the Oldham Players and Oldham Theatre Workshop. Rowe trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and made his professional Shakespearean debut while he was still in his third year at Guildhall, playing Fabian in Twelfth Night at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. (Rowe's professional debut had been at the Crucible in Carmen Jones when he was in his second year at Guildhall.) His biography in The Boys From Syracuse programme also states that "whilst still at college he played the part of Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet which went on a small tour of Greece", although there are no details as to the company or director of that production known. In 1990, he doubled Sir Benjamin Backbite and Sir Toby in Phyllida Lloyd's production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal at the Royal Exchange, Manchester.