Liam John Neeson
,
Ballymena, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK
Birthday
1952-06-07
Occupation
Actor
Spouse(s)
Natasha Richardson(1994–2009) (Widowed)
Years Active
1976-
Biography
Liam John Neeson OBE is an actor from Northern Ireland. He has been nominated for a number of awards, including an Academy Award for Best Actor, a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama. Empire magazine ranked Neeson among both the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History" and "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time".
In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast for two years. He then acted in the Arthurian film Excalibur (1981). Between 1982 and 1987, Neeson starred in five films, most notably alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty (1984), and Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons in The Mission (1986). He landed a leading role alongside Patrick Swayze in Next of Kin (1989).
Neeson rose to prominence when he starred as Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List (1993). He has since starred in other successful films, including the drama Nell (1994), the historical biopic Michael Collins (1996), the 1998 film adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the epic space opera Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), the biographical drama Kinsey (2004), the superhero film Batman Begins (2005), the action thriller series Taken (2008–2014), the thriller-survival film The Grey (2011), and the historical drama Silence (2016). He also provided the voices of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy (2005–2010) and the titular monster in A Monster Calls (2016).
In 2008 Neeson starred in the action film Taken, a French-produced film also starring Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace, based on a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Pierre Morel. Neeson plays a retired CIA operative from the elite Special Activities Division who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter after she is kidnapped. Taken was a worldwide box office hit, grossing $223.9 million worldwide, making almost $200 million more than its production budget. Neeson has said in interviews that he believed that Taken had put some people off the idea of actually travelling to Europe. Taken brought Neeson back into the center of the public eye and resulted in his being cast in many more big-budget Hollywood movies. That year he also narrated the documentary Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity and again lent his voice to Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008). He also provided a voice for Hayao Miyazaki's anime film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which received an August 2009 release.
In 2010, Neeson played Zeus in the remake of the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans. The film was a huge box-office hit, grossing $475 million worldwide. Neeson also starred in Atom Egoyan's erotic thriller Chloe, theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics on 26 March 2010. Chloe had enjoyed commercial success and became the Canadian director's biggest money maker ever. Later the same year, he played John "Hannibal" Smith in the spin-off movie from the television series The A-Team.
In 2010, Neeson voiced Aslan again in the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In 2011, Neeson starred in the action-thriller Unknown, a German-British-American co-production of a French book filmed in Berlin in early 2010, and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. This film led to a collaboration between Neeson and Collet-Serra for a series of similar action films including Non-Stop (2014), Run All Night (2015) and The Commuter (2018).
Neeson reunited with Steven Spielberg with plans to star as Abraham Lincoln in the 2012 film Lincoln, based on the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. In preparation for the role, Neeson visited the District of Columbia and Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln lived before being elected, and read Lincoln's personal letters. Neeson eventually declined the role, claiming he was "past his sell date" and had grown too old to play Lincoln. He was replaced by Daniel Day-Lewis.
It was announced in July 2010 that Neeson would guest-star on the new Showtime series The Big C. In 2011, he played himself in BBC2's series Life's Too Short. In late 2011, Neeson was cast to play the lead character, a journalist, in a new album recording and arena production of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. He replaced Richard Burton, who had posthumously appeared in the arena production through CGI animation. Neeson did not physically appear on the stage, instead playing the role through the use of 3D holography. In 2012, Neeson starred in Joe Carnahan's The Grey. The film received mostly positive reviews and Neeson's performance received critical acclaim. He also starred in Taken 2, a successful sequel to his 2008 blockbuster. That year, he once again played Ra's al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final film in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy. He narrated the first trailer for the film.
On 31 January 2014, it was reported that Neeson would work with director Martin Scorsese again in an adaptation of the novel Silence. Neeson had a supporting role as the henchman Bad Cop/Good Cop in the animated film The Lego Movie, which was a critical and commercial success. Neeson later played Bill Marks in the 2014 action film Non-Stop. The film was released on 28 February 2014. He also appeared, uncredited, as God in the BBC2 series Rev.. Neeson stars in the 2014 film A Walk Among the Tombstones, an adaption of the best-selling novel of the same name, in which he plays former cop Matthew Scudder, a detective hired to hunt the killers of a drug dealer's wife.
During Super Bowl XLIX, Supercell did a Clash of Clans commercial with Neeson playing the game as "AngryNeeson52" and vowing revenge on his opponent "BigBuffetBoy85" while waiting for his scone at a bakery. The appearance was a parody of his role in Taken. In 2016 Neeson narrated the RTÉ One three-part documentary on the Easter Rising, 1916. In 2016, he voiced the Monster in the Spanish film A Monster Calls.
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