Liam Neeson
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
I'm very honored myself, and I'm very, very fucking nervous.
14 years ago, I did a little Samuel Beckett piece called A Jew.
That's one of the reasons I took the job.
And Ralph Fiennes was... It was an evening of Beckett pieces.
I used to worry about it because I started off in the theater for four years, just nothing but theater.
and did The Odd Play and The Crucible and this Beckett piece.
And then about three, four years ago, The Muse just left me.
I was offered some stuff and it's just, I love seeing my friends do it.
You're talking about The Muse for theater.
Yeah, that stuff's hard to do, you know?
Yeah, I mean, it does take a lot, those films you do.
You know, it takes a village, right?
I have a little routine when I'm doing one.
I get up, I exercise for 30, 35 minutes maximum.
And, you know, when you're doing the junkets and stuff, say, oh, you do your own stunts.
And I always say to them, please listen to me.
You know, jumping out of windows and falling over chairs.
Yeah, but it's like learning a dance, Jason.
No, no, Rafe, he's a really, really good friend.
But I remember when we shot that, that was the first... We did two, Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans, was it?
And the first one was... That was nearly 13 years ago.
When Rafe comes on, he's playing Hades, you know, the god of hell.
I couldn't look him straight in the eyes.
I had to keep looking at his forehead.
you know, we're dressed in wigs and beards and all this stuff.
And it's like, it's like, oh, come on.
I couldn't do the scene with him.
I just had to keep looking at his forehead.
So when am I going to see Series 3?
No, we did The Crucible on Broadway.
And then we did a film called Kinsey.
Then we did another film with Antonio Banderas.
She was having an affair with him.
I'm not blowing smoke up my ass here.
Just prior to Christmas past...
Tony Hopkins used to say, anytime we see each other, give each other a hug.
And I said, how's it going, Tony?
He says, I haven't been found out yet.
My first little film was 1977, Jason.
I was actually living in Belfast.
There were bombs and armored cars going.
It was a bit like Ukraine, I can imagine at the minute.
And I was in this theater called the Lyric Players Theater.
And we played six nights a week during the height of the troubles.
A couple of times there were bomb scares.
We'd have to go out onto the street with the audience.
Well, my mindset was I was just so thrilled to be acting and getting paid for it.
And it was literally as simple as that.
And, you know, I was 24 when I turned professional and, you know, still pretty much a kid.
And, you know, all this shit was happening out in the streets and stuff.
I felt I was in a bubble, my own bubble of joy doing these plays.
We did a different play every four weeks, you know.
Well, certainly my ambition then would have been, I mean, it wasn't, I never thought of movies at all.
That was unattainable for some reason.
But I thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to be in Britain's national theatre as a regular player, you know?
Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Robert Stevens, Colin Blakely, who was my hero.
He was from the north of Ireland too.
No, 1976 he did Hamlet, which was very, very good, which I saw.
Yeah, it just seems... I've just been so lucky, Jason.
The first movie was for an evangelical outreach who were making a film in Belfast, believe it or not, of Pilgrim's Progress.
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
And apparently the little film is still touring Africa and stuff, you know, to get converts and stuff.
And I remember there's a place called Cave Hill that sort of overlooks the city of Belfast, and I was playing there.
So I was on a cross with a fake crown of thorns and stuff in my hands with makeup, false nails stuck in them and stuff.
And I remember thinking, why are they not rolling the camera?
Why are they not saying action and stuff?
And they were all, the team of the evangelical people, they were all praying.
Oh, while I was standing there and
And I'm looking down at Belfast and I'm seeing armored cars going up and down and sirens going and stuff.
No, I moved down to Dublin and was fortunate enough to do a couple of plays there.
And then I joined the Abbey Theatre, which was Ireland, is Ireland's national theatre, I guess.
I was there for a while and I did a production of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.
John Borman, the film director who lives in Ireland, he came to see it and he was put
together this film Excalibur Arthurian legends and he asked me would I play Sir Gawain and I was in this film with shining suits of armor myself my best buddy Kieran Hines was Sir Lott
I thought this is just the best.
Yeah, I don't know how I can see the gentleman's face, Mr. Anderson.
I think it was Ken Anderson who was in charge of this little outreach.
I just met him, and he knew I was Catholic, Irish Catholic, and we never really spoke about professional questions.
And this shoot was only about three weeks or something, you know.
It was The Bounty, and we shot it in Morea, which is an island, beautiful island, just off Tahiti.
And, oh, my God, I turned 31, so I turned 78 in June of this year, so that's a bunch of years ago.
Yeah, I've done some stuff in Ireland, some miniseries in Ireland.
Tony and Mel, Daniel Day, Lewis, a whole bunch of great British actors.
You had trouble casting it, huh?
It was six-day weeks, and we all just loved Tony because he, as well as Captain Bly,
he took care of us, he took care of his crew.
And a lot of the crew were guys just fresh out of drama school in England, you know.
First job, and there you are in Tahiti, you know.
But Tony just took care of us, and I'll never forget that quality he had.
And we had a great director, Roger Donaldson,
But he and Tony didn't get on terribly well because he would do endless takes.
I remember one day, 27 takes of hoisting the princess, the Haitian princess up onto the bounty.
Like 27 takes and the sun beating down and stuff.
But we all started developing that.
What's the opposite of cabin fever when you're surrounded by water all the time?
There's a scientific, there's a medical name for it.
So if somebody sent you out a newspaper from Britain or Ireland,
You would read this from cover to cover.
And then someone would, you'd give it to your friend to read to, you know.
By this stage, the newspaper's a week old, 10 days old.
And then you'd start, I'd say, Richard, where's my paper?
I'd say, but you read it, you finished it.
We were there for three months.
So we were just all starting to get on each other's nerves.
I mean, if I'm playing the lead, I'd watch it at least a couple of times, but that's it.
Unless it's some technical thing where the director needs me to be on the left, and I think, no, I should be on the right of this character, for example.
I don't know if you ever feel that.
Anytime I see something, I think, oh, God.
And by the way, that includes narrating documentaries and stuff like that.
No, I was a retired ex kind of Keith Richards sort of guy.
I think they wanted me to manage them or so, you know.
I'm the older I get, I have real trouble with names.
And even if I'm calling my sisters, I have three sisters.
Just to try to disarm some sort of unfriendly.
But Jason, your dog's interesting.
I was living out in Los Angeles at the time and I,
My agent sent me this script, which was just breathtakingly horrible and beautiful and incredibly well-written.
And I knew Steven Spielberg a little bit.
Was it Eric Roth or Steven Zalian?
And I had read for Stephen with a bunch of kids when he was casting Empire of the Sun.
Christian Bale's first movie, right?
So I was asked to go in and meet him for Schindler's List.
And I had, you know, because it's set in the 1940s, I hired a 40s suit and I tried to keep my hair short and stuff.
And I spent about two, two and a half hours with Stephen.
It was just he and I in a room.
And I prepared a couple of little speeches from the film, the script.
And then after it was over, he said, thank you very much.
I thought, well, if I don't get this, I've spent two and a half, three hours with one of the great movie makers of our time.
And then I went to New York after that to do a play.
I had to get on the stage again.
Well, it was quite a few weeks.
I was doing this play where I met my wife.
The play was called Anna Christie.
Cade and Cade's mum came to see the play.
And they came backstage afterwards, which was very sweet of them.
And I opened my door and I was half undressed and stuff.
I said, oh my God, Stephen, I'm sorry, let me put a robe on or something.
And Cade's mum was quite emotional, quite teary after the performance, the play.
And I went and just gave her a hug.
Apparently, on the way, when they left and they were driving back home, Kate said to Stephen, that's just what Schindler would have done.
Now, Stephen told me, no, it was your audition that got you the part.
But I like the story of that's what Schindler would have done.
What's the great quote from the man who shot Liberty Valance?
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
I like to think it's because I hooked Kate's mom.
And now, a word from our sponsor.
It was interesting with Stephen because it was the first film he had done without using a storyboard.
Normally he always uses a storyboard and you can go up and see the cartoons drawn of what you're going to shoot.
And he was telling the story of his people, his Jewish people.
Yeah, and I remember the first day.
We finished the play here in New York on Sunday, Sunday afternoon.
And as far as my memory, as far as I can remember, it was either Tuesday morning or the Wednesday morning, like 5.30 in the morning.
we were at the gates of Auschwitz, the real Auschwitz in Poland.
And I think the World Jewish Congress, I think that's the right name, didn't give Stephen permission to shoot inside Auschwitz.
But the production design team did a brilliant job.
We shot outside of Auschwitz, but made it seem as if it was inside Auschwitz.
And I was dressed in a big fur coat and hat and
Nice and warm, even though it was unbelievably cold.
And this train was coming in and all these extras were coming out as Jewish people and German extras with guard dogs.
And I remember I was waiting to do my bit and I walked down, you know, by the barbed wire fences and looking inside at the huts that, you know, the Jewish people were crammed into all those years ago.
And I was just looking and Branko Lustig, who was one of the producers, he's dead now, God rest him, but he came up to me and said, how do you feel?
just looking forward to starting, you know?
And we were looking at the huts and he pointed out to a hut and said, see that one there, third one from the left, I'm making this up now, but he said, that's where I was.
And I thought, fuck, this isn't acting.
This is a piece of history we're telling here.
I just kept saying to myself, I'm not fucking worthy.
I should go back to Ireland, go into the theater.
dressed up in this big fur coat and here to save these Jewish people.
And there's a little scene where I pull one of these girls, little Jewish girls up.
Because these prisoners shouldn't have been sent to Auschwitz.
They're supposed to be working in my factory because Oskar Schindler had this armaments factory.
And he was there to save their lives.
Otherwise, they were going to die in Auschwitz.
So I go up to this guard and say, how dare you do this?
I'm shaking, and I pulled a little girl up, and I was doing it too gently because she was freezing, this little actress.
And Stephen came over to me and said, you've got to just, listen, stop the niceness, grab her, pull her up.
Her life's at stake here, you know?
So I had to, I apologized to her.
I said, look, I'm going to grab you quite roughly and pull you up so that this guard sees you.
She was only about seven or eight years of age.
And I'm supposed to say to the guard, I need this little girl, those small hands, so they can clean the inside of metal casings for the armaments.
But I could never quite say the line right.
You're speaking in German at this point, right?
But anyway, I'm rambling, Jason.
All the directors are different.
Well, I have a gym, and I use a bag sometimes, but I just like to read.
I love to do that whenever I get a chance.
We should hook you up with Jimmy Kimmel.
I'm going to go to Jimmy's lodge sometime this year.
I was supposed to go last year.
He's really done a great job with it.
Certainly when I was in Ireland in the theater, after shows we'd go to the local pub.
And then you turn a certain age and it sticks to you.
You start putting on weight and it's like, oh my God.
Yeah, just over eight years ago.
No, I have gummies with the CBD on it and a little bit of melatonin in them.
I know, it's so fucking boring.
And I'm constantly, this, it's a mug.
It keeps my black decaf tea hot for five or six hours.
And it's also my little security blanket.
I try and get it into every movie.
I'm still into my Nordic noir crime.
And Henning Mankell, he passed away about four years ago.
And I just played Philip Marlowe in my last film.
So I had never read, much to my shame, Raymond Chandler before.
So I read most of his stuff for preparation, I guess.
I like doing documentaries, and I've done quite a few of those.
Oh, there's one on Anne Frank that's coming out.
I played Anne Frank's father, just a few lines.
And the current one on Benjamin Franklin, I think, has come out.
And he's so erudite and he's just... Did you see the Yali episode?
I have to say, Muhammad Ali was, is, always will be my idol.
World War II, but the American Civil War, I have to watch that at least once a year.
And it came out, I don't know, 25 years ago or something.
Yeah, I started when I was nine.
I think I had my last fight when I was like 17 or something.
Wow, my God, that's old enough to get hurt.
Well, at the age of 13, 14, I started to shoot up.
Then I guess I was about 6'3", or something.
And the punches were, yeah, they were starting to hurt, you know.
And I remember once coming, we had a tournament in our little local parochial hall in my hometown back in Ireland.
And I actually won the fight, but I felt my heart of hearts.
But when I came out of the ring, my trainer said, okay, Liam, go on downstairs and put your clothes on.
And I was... And fix your face.
But I didn't know what he meant.
And that was like a kind of a strange concussion, you know?
Jason, can I say to you, I know I said this to you before when I saw you at the Garden a couple of years ago, three years ago or something.
Please give Victoria, your mom, my love.
Please, please give them my love.
And it's something, and I can't quite remember Jason, but...
It was a flight from either Los Angeles to London, Pan Am, which doesn't exist, of course, or from London to LA.
And I was just, I was very vulnerable, not because I have a fear of flying.
And for some reason, Victoria, your mom, spotted something in me and she just took care of me.
She'd bring me tea and check on me every so often.
It's an honor to talk with the three of you.
Can you say hi to Laura if you talk to her before I do?
She's going over to Ireland, I think, in May to shoot a film.
I'm going over there to shoot a film at my...
Best dear friend, Kieran Hines.
Worked on a shooter film on Donegal.