Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an actor from Northern Ireland. In 1976, he joined the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast for two years. He then acted in the Arthurian film, Excalibur. Between 1982 and 1987, Neeson starred in five films; most notably alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bountyand Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons in The Mission. He landed a leading role alongside Patrick Swayze in Next of Kin...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth7 June 1952
CityBallymena, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
There's periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years . . . anytime I hear that door opening, I still think I'm going to hear her.
Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift.
No man is an island, as they say. No. I've tried it. I've gone on retreats at various times in my life for three or four or five days. I was desperate to get out of there and talk to somebody. But I fly fish a lot, and I can only do that really by myself. I find I'm never lonesome when I'm on a river, far from it, but it's a lonely practice.
The whole awards thing is great. Why? Because the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, they put a focus on the industry, and that focus translates into people buying tickets to see movies or download films, legitimately download them. And it keeps us all at work. So I'm a big fan of award shows.
I was always attracted to the type of cinema hero as an adolescent growing up in Ireland. Robert Mitchum springs to mind. Later on, it was Steve McQueen to a certain extent and Charles Bronson. They're these types of grizzled characters who had one foot on the side of law and order and the other foot in the bad guy's camp.
It's always fun to do the fight sequences and then to complete them, because some of them are quite complicated - with guns and so on - and there's always things that can go wrong. It's fun to shoot those things because we rehearse them very strenuously. It's fun to shoot them, and fun to know they're finished, that they're in the can so to speak.
We live in an age where revenge seems to be the most important thing for individuals and countries. Why not forgive each other? Decide to accept each other's differences and move on.
I learned my "facts of life" on toilet walls. I'd walk up in school bathrooms and there would be crude drawings and figures engaged in sex. That's how I learned.
I don't think for this generation, but for my generation and my father's generation, men had difficulty in accessing emotion and then being able to talk about it.
Standing under freezing cold showers every morning, - I did that. I got up to seven minutes most mornings, and it actually works; it immunizes your body, and your body starts getting used to the cold. It really works."
I'm fairly comfortable in fight sequences and stuff like that. I've done a few of them. I'm comfortable with that sort of stuff as long as I'm reasonably fit, and it's fun to do actually. I'm like a kid in a toy shop doing that stuff.
Making a film, you do need stamina, whether you're doing fight scenes or not. It's important to keep fit. I'm not talking about having perfect abs and stuff, but you've got to be on top of your game, especially if you're playing the lead. You have to look after yourself.
Live and die on this day... Live and die on this day...
I don't think that I am a sex symbol, although it's very flattering.