Liam Neeson: Liam and the Force


https://lebeauleblog.com/2021/02/18/liam-neeson-liam-and-the-force/

I think most of us today would consider Liam Neeson a movie star. He had all those late-career action movies after Taken. When he was cast as Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace, Neeson was a household name. But he wasn’t exactly a movie star. He was best known for his Oscar nominated performance in Schindler’s List, but his follow-ups had trouble connecting with audiences.

At the time of this cover story for the May 1999 issue of Movieline magazine, expectations for the Star Wars prequel were sky high. Neeson himself makes some bold predictions about fan reaction which were ultimately proven wrong.

Coming from a Catholic minority in Protestant Ballymena in Northern Ireland, Liam Neeson never dreamed of becoming an actor. As a teenager he was interested in boxing, and won his weight class for three years running until he got punched silly in a fight when he was 15. School was always a serious matter for him, but after spending one year at a university and two at a teacher’s college, he got caught copying someone’s paper and wound up rethinking what he might do for the rest of his life. Luckily, he found an interest in the theater. In 1976 he joined the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast and, two years later, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Neeson’s film career began when director John Boorman cast him in Excalibur. The films that followed include Dino De Laurentiis’s version of The Bounty (with Mel Gibson and Daniel Day-Lewis), Andrei Konchalovsky’s Duet for One (with Julie Andrews), Roland Joffe’s The Mission (with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons), Peter Yates’s Suspect (with Cher), Leonard Nimoy’s The Good Mother (with Diane Keaton), Sam Raimi’s Darkman (with Frances McDormand) and Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (with Judy Davis). Some of these films were anticipated “breakthroughs” for Neeson, but high expectations for his rise to superstardom kept falling short.

Then Steven Spielberg tapped him to star in Schindler’s List, and he successfully handled a difficult performance, captured the hearts of millions of people and won an Oscar nomination. Schindler’s List was a hard act to follow–Nell, Rob Roy, Michael Collins and Les Miserables were all worthy efforts that proved commercially disappointing–but being cast as one of the main characters in George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be an even harder act to follow. The two films that have that job are The Haunting of Hill House, due out this summer, and Gun Shy, an independent film produced by and costarring Sandra Bullock.

When I meet Liam Neeson, he’s clean-shaven with short hair, looking more like Michael Collins than the shaggy Qui-Gon Jinn, the master Jedi knight he plays in The Phantom Menace. We find a table, order some red wine, and Neeson checks his watch with two dials, one always set at New York time, where he lives with his wife, Natasha Richardson, and their two toddler sons. “Oh God,” he says, “look at the time. I forgot to call the children.” He asks a waitress for a portable phone, and, hunching over the phone to achieve some degree of intimacy, he talks to his boys gently, tells them he loves them, then says good night to his wife. “All right,” he smiles, handing the phone back, “now we can start.”


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