Liam Neeson: Puttin' on the Ritz

If you let him, Neeson describes a life story that is more colorful and seemingly heroic than most Hollywood movies. The road that led him to his current home in Laurel Canyon and champagne in a hotel overlooking Central Park began in a working-class, council house in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. He's been a working actor for 16 years, the bulk of it spent in sturdy, time-honored theater in Ireland and England. This is not Tony Danza. Or, as Neeson puts it, "If this business fell apart tomorrow, I know I could always go back to Ireland. I can always act. I feel sorry for these kids in Hollywood. All they want is to be on 'The Arsenio Hall Show.'"

Neeson grew up the only boy among three girls in a strict Catholic, working-class family. His father was a school custodian. Most of Neeson's childhood memories are pleasant. Take his recollections of the six years during which he was an altar boy, for example. "You're celebrating an act that's 2,000 years old," he tells me. "There's something very holy about it." Even his studies were a cause for celebration. "I loved school," he recalls. "I loved pleasing the elders. I really got off on pleasing teachers."

But Neeson's story of life as an Irish Pollyanna is saved--or considerably tempered--when he talks about his long foray into boxing. He began boxing at the age of nine, encouraged by a local Catholic priest who organized a group of boys his age. It was Neeson's first exposure to performance, exhibitionism and competition-- and he rose to the occasion, eventually winning a championship in his teens. "It terrified me, climbing into the ring," he says. "You're totally exposed. There's nothing to hide behind. In life, to a certain extent, you're always hiding behind a false beard. This was so primal. You live and fall based on your ability."

Neeson's boxing background served him well in last fall's Crossing the Line, a film about the violent, underworld sport of bareknuckle fighting. The movie's fight scenes were so well choreographed, he says, that he didn't suffer a scratch. With sudden verve, Neeson gets up from his chair to demonstrate. The champagne has loosened both of us up. He pushes the coffee table aside and leans over me on the sofa. First he shows how he can convincingly hit the side of my face without hurting me, stopping the force of the blow the instant he touches flesh. Then he tells me to punch him. My fist slams out in the direction of his left cheek. He expertly turns his face to the right at the last minute; my hand falls down through the air. So much for the power of the press.

Just when you wonder if Neeson has some great stories to tell about decking a bunch of rowdy locals in some bar in San Pedro--or even Dublin--the altar boy makes a return appearance. "I've never been in a street fight," he says solemnly. "If something bad started to happen, I think I'd use the acting to get out of it somehow. It's wrong, it's violent."

Neeson was leaning toward a career in teaching or architecture when the key plot point of his life occurred. It was several years after what he still calls "one of the best jobs I've ever had"--being a forklift operator. ("It was incredible. This great sense of power.") In January 1976, he called the Lyric Player's Theatre, a respected Belfast repertory company, on a whim. It turned out the theater needed someone of his age and height at that very moment. Two hours later, he was signed to a contract with the company.

Neeson spent two years with the Lyric Theatre and then moved on to the prestigious Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He still relishes his very early days as a stage actor. "There'd be these little drama festivals all over. We toured Ireland, we really barnstormed the place. One little town after another and you wondered where all the people came from."

In 1980, John Boorman saw Neeson in a production of Of Mice and Men and cast him as Sir Gawain in Excalibur. From then on, the journeyman stage actor began a parallel career in TV miniseries and feature films like the aforementioned Satisfaction, The Bounty, Suspect, The Good Mother and Darkman, as well as The Mission and High Spirits, slowly evolving to near movie star status in America.

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