Liam Neeson became famous as Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List. He's about to become a megastar as Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
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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."
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Were you a fan of Star Wars when it first came out?
LIAM NEESON: I was. When I was 21 or 22, I was working in theater in Belfast and I remember so well going to see it in this very heavily Protestant area where a bomb had gone off two days before. There were a lot of police and army out, but the cinema was open. I thought it was truly breathtaking. I love Arthurian legends and mythology, and here was a wee interpretation of these classical stories.
Q: Did you understand immediately it was capturing certain myths?
A: Yeah, I did, because it's a simple story, yet with all the complexities of myth. The technology was so understated--Lucas didn't knock you in the face with it. I thought he was an amazing director who had created this totally believable world. The other two films I wasn't a huge fan of, but he didn't direct them.
Q: Did the fact that Lucas was directing have a big influence on your taking on the part of Qui-Gon Jinn?
A: Yeah. American Graffiti is one of the great American movies. And the very rough cut of the film I've seen, which is maybe five percent of the computer graphics, is very, very powerful. Star Wars fans will not be disappointed. It's a kick-ass film.
Q: Can you understand the wide appeal of Star Wars?
A: It's recognizing that mythological stories are part of our genetic code. It's like the great John Ford Westerns. These stories help explain our existence on this planet--if there's a deity or a God or a Buddha. George and some of those great directors interpret that for an audience. That is part of the appeal of Star Wars, because he has successfully tapped into the subconsciousness that we all share.
Q: What, if anything, did you learn from these films?
A: Well, there's just the basic level of good versus evil. Finding a balance in your life. Just to be reminded of all that stuff. It's like if you pray or if you have a mantra, the more times you do it, the more the truth of it seeps into you.
Q: Do you pray?
A: I'm a Catholic, I pray, and I believe in the power of prayer. And the more times you say the Our Father or the Hail Mary, the more it actually reveals the truth to you. And I've been doing it for a long time.
Q: What do you pray for?
A: I pray for people who have become troubled, who are friends or family. And to give thanks for my life. I'm the luckiest guy in the world, I get a chance to do something I love and they pay me lots of money for it. This is an honor to sit with you in this beautiful hotel in Los Angeles. It should be wintertime, man. I should be working in some factory in Belfast. But I'm not. I give thanks for that.
Q: Did you have favorite Star Wars characters?
A: I loved Obi-Wan Kenobi. I just loved what this man stood for. And because Alec Guinness is such a brilliant actor, I believed that world.
Q: And is your character, Qui-Gon Jinn, similar?
A: I'm from that code, from that world of Jedi.
Q: How did Lucas convince you--or you convince him--that you belonged in The Phantom Menace?
A: I sent out feelers. I'd heard there was maybe a part for someone like me. The feeler returned was, "Do you want to meet George Lucas?" Of course I did. We were both going to be in London at the same time, so I met with George and Rick McCallum, his producing partner. And all we talked about was rearing children. He suggested I read this book, which he sent to me, and that was the end of it.
Q: Never talked about the movie at all?
A: Not really. And I hadn't read the script.
Q: Did you find that strange?
A: I didn't. I said at the end of the interview, "Look, George, for what it's worth, if you think there's something for me, I'd love to be involved in your film. And I'm glad you're gonna be directing it." When they offered me this, I still hadn't read the script. Rick called up and said, "The character was originally a 60-year-old, would you be prepared to play 55?" I said, "Sure, I'm an actor." But I thought, I'm not going to do old-man acting, because that would be stupid--this guy has to have a lot of lightsaber fights. So we struck a balance.
Q: Where does the name Qui-Gon Jinn come from?
A: I never asked George. I just loved the poetry of it. I had a joke with Ewan McGregor, who is Obi-Wan Kenobi and my apprentice. I was Qui-Gon Jinn and he was Tonic. Gin and Tonic.
Q: Did you understand your character's background?
A: There's actors who want to know what their character had for breakfast last Tuesday. I'm not from that school. I had this amazing costume, half samurai, half Arthurian, and just having that on, I got the guy. I knew how he stood. So, do I know his world? Yes, I do. But if I have to describe it, I can't.
Q: Did Lucas describe him to you at all?
A: Yeah, he did. George is very passionate about it. There's a scene where I talk to one of the characters about these "midiclorians"--it's a wee bit of science gobbledygook. I asked George, "What is this stuff I'm saying?" He said, "It's like in our bodies there are thousands of different bacteria that our body needs in order to stay alive. Let's say one of those bacteria has an intelligence that's able to commune with the ether, the cosmos, the universe." That's clever, I thought. "Thank you. Say no more, I've got it." So I'm from that world. Times 10.
Q: Has anyone ever played this kind of master?
A: Alec Guinness in the first Star Wars. And there was Takashi Shimura in Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai--he kind of inspired me. But my character is supposed to be a slightly maverick master Jedi. Unlike Sam Jackson's character, my character's not on the Jedi Council, this elevated board of Jedi masters who rule the universe. I could have been on that years ago, light-years ago, but I chose to follow my own instinct, and have sometimes gone against what the Jedi Council stands for.
Q: How old is your character supposed to be?
A: On this planet, compared to where they are? About 400 years old, given Einstein's theory of relativity and all the rest.
Q: The plot of the film has something to do with the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems. So, is this going to be like the American Revolution of the future?
A: To answer your question: in Michael Collins I fought for the Republic. In The Phantom Menace I fight for the Republic again. I'm very honored to do that.
Q: What did you have to learn to play this Jedi knight?
A: Reading Joseph Campbell and watching the Star Wars films again, and the _Star Wars _comic books, which I found so complex I almost couldn't fathom them.
Q: Are kids already asking for your autograph?
A: I made this pact that I will only sign Star Wars stuff if it's going to a children's charity, because it sells for a fortune. The more I sign, the less money it will get at auction for something like Down's syndrome children. I have a sister who has a Down's syndrome child.
Q: You didn't make a lot of money when you did Schindler's List--will you for this one?
A: I took a big cut to do it.
Q: What about on the other side? Do you have any percentage?
A: We'll see. [Chuckles]
Q: Do you think your life will ever be the same?
A: I'm 46 years of age. I'm married with two kids. I love to fly-fish. That will never change. At the end of the day, you know something? It's just a movie.
Q: Harrison Ford was the break-out star of Star Wars. Who do you think might be the break-out star here?
A: They all have a chance. There's this wonderful actor called Ahmed Best, who plays the amphibian character Jar Jar, truly one of the great comic creations. George saw him in Stomp in San Francisco. He's totally concealed, but the computer graphic is all based on Ahmed's wonderful performance. If I was to hedge a bet, he's the next Eddie Murphy.
Q: OK. Let's talk about some of your other movies. You're in the middle of filming a second movie for this summer, Jan De Bont's The Haunting of Hill House. How's it going?
A: I've worked with Jan before, when he was a director of photography. He's a good man, passionate, which is what I like. Jan could film all day until someone tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Time to go home." I love that energy.
Q: You have another movie coming up, too. How did Sandra Bullock convince you to work for her low-budget film Gun Shy?
A: I read the script. I thought, I'm totally wrong casting, so when I eventually got through to Sandra, after finding out all her aliases--she was in Paris at the time--I asked her, "Why me?" She said, "Because no one would think it." I said, "I'm feeling very scared, and very excited. That's my litmus test. I want to do this." It ended up one of the happiest shoots in my life.
Q: I've heard that in the movie you get an enema from Sandra, who plays your nurse.
A: There's never been a courtship scene like this. We laughed. We had to.
Q: Do you understand why you're an actor?
A: No, I don't. It's something I question all the time.
Q: Did you have any preconceptions about this business before you got into it?
A: My ultimate aim was to be Iago for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Theater was what I wanted to do.
Q: How did doing Anna Christie onstage change your life, as your wife claims?
A: I was living in L.A. and had done this film, Leap of Faith, with Steve Martin. Steve was great and all the individual ingredients were wonderful, but it was just the most miserable time. I thought, I can't live here any more and do these films only to come away feeling so small. I had been in L.A. for five years. It was time to get back to my theatrical roots. Natasha and the producer had offered me Anna Christie, and every day we rehearsed it I thought, God, this is what the real work is about. So much better than some of these dip-shit films I was involved in. During the play, Steven Spielberg asked, "Do you want to be my Oskar Schindler?" This was after I'd done the screen test and hadn't heard from him for weeks.
Q: You've said that every minute of making Schindler's List was precious. Why?
A: I'd have to put it on par with Michael Collins, which took us 14 years to make and was very dear to my heart. But with Schindler, I was aware that it isn't just a piece of entertainment. It was important.
Q: You've worked with both Lucas and Spielberg. Would you consider them geniuses?
A: Ah, geniuses. Mozart was a genius. Van Gogh. When I hear "genius" in our industry--like a "genius actor"--there's no such thing.
Q: What about playwrights?
A: Genius? Shakespeare and Chekhov.
Q: What are the last few books you've read?
A: I just finished A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, which I liked, and I read Into Thin Air and the other [Jon] Krakauer book about the young boy who walks into the wilderness. I'm reading a book of poems by Seamus Heaney that I have in my bag all the time. And I still delve into the Holocaust stories.
Q: How do you see yourself?
A: My wife always describes me thus: "You always see the glass half empty. It's never half full." That pretty much captures what I think about myself.
Q: What do you think of the description of you in GQ: "He looks like an extremely handsome man who has been whacked in the face with a frying pan"?
A: God, was that written by a guy or a girl?
Q: Must have been a woman because you rarely speak to male journalists.
A: That's true.
Q: Would you agree that early on you were better known for the women you dated than the films you appeared in?
A: The press conjured this shit up.
Q: Is the British press worse than any other press?
A: The worst. And they continue to sink.
Q: You recently won an $85,000 suit against a British tabloid, which reported you and your wife were headed for a divorce. What made you go after them?
A: Because we were terribly hurt by it. We were in Italy at the time and came back to these urgent calls from our friends and family. My first thought was something had happened to the kids or to my mother.
Q: Did you sue just The Mirror or all the other papers that picked it up?
A: All of them.
Q: Joyce Carol Oates said, "Men have a far more difficult time simply living, existing, trying to measure up to the absurd standards of masculinity in our culture." Agree?
A: I do feel men are kind of lost at the moment because of the whole women's revolution, which wasn't a real revolution because we weren't included. Women's power is very prevalent at the moment and it's great, but men are really scared by it. They don't know how to cope with it. Men are still from that era of the strong, silent type who never cried and kept it all in, and that doesn't apply anymore, it's bullshit.
Q: Norman Mailer has said: "There isn't a man alive who doesn't have a profound animosity towards women." Is he right?
A: Oh God. Pretty devastating thing to say. Do I hate my mum? Is that the next thing?
Q: What do you envy in women?
A: Their openness. They're great at talking to each other. Two women can get together and talk about their periods. That's pretty intense. Guys aren't very open with each other. That has to do with the time when men were hunters, quietly making their kills, as the women were back in the cave saying, "He did what to ya? I don't believe it! Don't ever let him do that again."
Q: You've credited Helen Mirren with first introducing you to a sophisticated world. How important was she in your development?
A: Helen taught me there's more to life than meat, vegetables and potatoes on a plate. Literally, I had my first Chinese meal with her. I was with her in London and we went to meet some of her friends in a restaurant bar and there were all these beautiful English socialites chatting away and pulling the heads off shrimps. I'd never seen a shrimp before. I was filled with a feeling of total inadequacy. Helen showed me how to do it.
Q: Who's the most influential person in your life?
A: My wife.
Q: Are you appreciative that you didn't get too famous too fast?
A: I became an actor at the age of 22. When I did Schindler's List I was 40. So I wasn't a kid. I like to think I have my feet squarely on the ground.
Q: You've said that you can recognize a movie that's going to be a hit seven out of ten times. How can you tell?
A: I don't know where you read that. It's so not true. It's the opposite. I'm, like, minus seven out of ten.
Q: Do you still feel you have a love-hate relationship with the film business?
A: I do. I guess that's the perfect relationship.
Q: You've said that directors' egos are larger than actors' egos, and that directors are all fascists at heart.
A: I think their egos are huge. They just are. I have a love/hate thing with directors within myself.
Q: What are some great performances you've admired?
A: Anything with Spencer Tracy. Fonda. Bobby Duvall's stuff. I would watch him read a telephone directory. Tom Hanks. Walter Matthau. Philippe Noiret. Gerard Depardieu.
Q: You're also a fan of Steven Seagal's, aren't you?
A: Yeah. I saw him in some film a few years ago where he was playing a policeman in the Bronx and his partner had been killed. I really believed what he was doing. Very real.
Q: Let's go back to the time before you were an actor. How would you describe your parents?
A: Simple honest working people. My father worked as a custodian in a Catholic boys' school; my mother was a cook in a girls' grammar school for over 30 years.
Q: Did they encourage you to reach for the moon?
A: No, because it wasn't like, "Oh, you must break out of this." They just wanted us to be the best we were capable of. With a lot of emphasis on school--that was important to them.
Q: Did you have a nickname growing up?
A: No. Well, "Big Lad." I started to shoot up when I was 13.
Q: What music and films did you most enjoy growing up?
A: I listened to a lot of music, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. I saw a lot of films, double bills like Play Misty for Me with Sidney Lumet's The Offence. The next night it might be Dracula with Valley of the Dolls. Just a weird mix.
Q: What about going to dances, a big part of Irish social life?
A: That's a terrifying feeling, being pushed out by my mom to go to a parochial hall dance on Wednesday night. Guys along one side, girls on the other. Walking across the room was like 17 miles. Then to be turned down. And it wasn't, "No thanks," it was a frown and a turned head. Nothing said. Even now when I hear loud music, it reminds me of that time.
Q: The Irish have always seemed to be a sexually repressed people. Was it that way for you growing up?
A: That's a big thing you're asking. I can only answer from my upbringing, which was very Catholic. We didn't have sexual education. It was never really a big issue. There were other issues at stake--the whole civil rights thing in '69. For me, I was too busy boxing and doing plays to be thinking about dating. That's how I got my rocks off. I didn't smoke or drink.
Q: So you retained your innocence in secondary school?
A: I started [having sex] when I was 19 or 20 when I went to university.
Q: Where were you when your father died?
A: I was in Los Angeles, living in Venice Beach. This particular morning I woke up and there was a bird sitting outside the window. And I thought, "Oh, it's going to come in and fly around and bang up against the windows and shit all over the place and it's going to take forever to catch it." The bird came in, flew around the room three times, landed back on the window, and as I went over to open the window further for it to fly out, it just didn't move. And I swear to God, Larry, my father reared canaries and I just started thinking about him so strongly. That afternoon I got a call from my sister saying Dad had died in his sleep. I went home for the funeral and was talking to my middle sister, Bernadette, and she told me how she'd seen this pigeon with a damaged claw and she started thinking about my father. When she and I were telling this to my aunt, my father's sister, she said, "Oh yeah, yeah, yes, there's always a bird appears when a Neeson dies." She said it so matter-of-factly. That's the gospel truth.
Q: Seven years ago you said you wanted to see how far you could take it, for the power it would give you to do what you really wanted. Do you feel you have achieved that power?
A: I guess I have. A lot of these things I've said were before I became a father. In fathering, everything is put in its slot, including acting. Now it's, "You want me for this? Fine. You don't? I'm not going to lose a night's sleep." A few years ago it would have been, "Why does he not want me?"
Q: Do you keep a journal?
A: I don't. I tried to keep one on a film a few years ago--did it for about a week, and then I read it back. It was like: "Wasn't called onto the set until 11." "Jessica has just arrived, she looks very nice." "Didn't eat lunch today." It was the most boring, bland shit. I had to stop it.
Q: What's an embarrassing thing that's happened to you?
A: A couple of years ago, we were walking down a corridor in a hotel and a lady stopped me and asked if she could introduce me to her husband, who had landed on the Normandy beaches during World War II. They said how much they loved my work, and the woman asked me for an autograph and I signed it. Then she said, "When you were doing The English Patient, was it very hard?" Ralph [Fiennes] is a very good friend of mine, I couldn't wait to tell him. It was very embarrassing, but they were so sweet, these people.
Q: What's your serious issue?
A: UNICEF. I'm an ambassador for Ireland, which I take seriously. We launched this thing on Aer Lingus, where you can take loose currency from other countries and put it in a UNICEF envelope. We've gathered 360,000 pounds so far.
Q: Do you envision your own death?
A: Lately I have. Maybe because I'm in the middle of life, and I'm a father.
Q: After Michael Collins you had surgery to remove a blockage in your colon. How serious was that?
A: I was running four miles every day, doing my sit-ups, my push-ups. Didn't drink,
didn't smoke. I had a great surgeon at the Brotman Medical Center who saved my life. And it only cost me two grand. Now people say to me, "Next Thursday you're going to meet..." And I think, "Next Thursday?" That's 70,000 years away for me. Just take it a day at a time. I try to live that way.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Sandra Bullock for the April 99 issue of Movieline.