Globetrotting Liam Neeson sits still for just long enough to tell DONALD CLARKEabout being a Catholic in Ballymena, becoming an actor and bonding with James Nesbitt, with whom he stars in 'Five Minutes of Heaven'
IT'S NOT EASY being Liam Neeson. The veteran Irish actor is currently shooting Chloe, the new film from Atom Egoyan, in the director's native Toronto, but, in between takes, he is due to present an Oscar at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. That's tomorrow. But Liam isn't in LA. He's not at home in New York State either. He's striding into a hotel suite in Dublin.
How is this possible? Do the Oscar people have a Tardis on hand? Is there more than one Liam Neeson? "I'm not sure," he says. "I am presenting the Oscar for best foreign language film with some ugly old woman called Freida Pinto." He laughs while I register his ironic description of the Slumdog Millionairestar. Then he glances somewhat plaintively towards his handlers. "I think I have to be on a plane at five in the morning. Is that right?"
Despite all this absurd rushing around, Liam Neeson looks in very good shape. Now an unlikely 56, he is slim, tanned and goodhumoured. This is not to suggest that he is particularly chatty. Like many Northern Irish men, the Ballymena giant – “I’m a better listener than a talker” – requires a bit of drawing out.
Still, he has made himself available for a public conversation at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, so he's going to have to get his talking hat on fairly soon. The festival is hosting a gala screening of Five Minutes of Heaven, the new film from Oliver Hirschbiegel, director of Downfall, and Neeson is keen to put the word about.
The screenplay by Guy Hibbert, writer of Omagh, was inspired by an actual incident in the Northern Irish Troubles and, though the film is largely fictional, the names of the two principles remain unchanged. Neeson plays Alistair Little, a UVF man, who, in 1975, gunned down a Catholic named Jim Griffin. James Nesbitt turns up as Joe Griffin, the dead man's brother. The film imagines a meeting between the two men during a television broadcast and speculates upon the demons such an encounter might unleash.
“The BBC had started these programmes on truth and reconciliation,” Neeson tells me as we take the short drive from the hotel to the venue. “I saw a couple of them. They involved Archbishop Tutu and he has been very successful doing that in South Africa. They got in touch with Joe and found he was very sensitive about it and wasn’t keen. So that idea was scuppered, but the BBC then approached Guy and asked him if he would like to do something on it and here we are.”
Neeson is one of the very few Grade-A movie stars who can honestly call themselves Irish. It was, therefore, not surprising to discover that the public interview had sold out in milliseconds. Neeson has broad appeal, of course. He exhibits the sort of old-fashioned good manners that appeal to grannies, but he can also call upon a hard-boiled tone that plays well with the action fans. Indeed, following prestige success in Schindler's List, Michael Collinsand Kinsey, he has recently emerged as a better-spoken, less Belgian Jean Claude van Damme in the broad thriller Taken. A few weeks ago, that film kicked, screeched and punched its way to the top of the US box-office.
Things have changed since he first moved to Dublin in the late 1970s. “Yes. I think I know Dublin now, but I don’t really,” he says, sitting into his chair on the raised dais. “I can remember acting in the Project Arts Centre and having to get out early because some unknown band called U2 were playing.”
Liam Neeson was born and raised in Ballymena, Co Antrim. His mother was a cook and his father was a caretaker at a nearby Catholic school. As decent, respectable people, they were, he admits, faintly appalled when he decided to run off and become an actor. Though, as he explains in an introductory anecdote, there were more serious things to worry about in those days.
One fateful day in 1975, he headed off to Belfast to audition for a place at the Lyric Theatre. He succeeded and, after signing the relevant document, enjoyed an excited journey back home.
“I opened and closed that bit of paper so often it was almost worn through,” he says. “I showed it to every soldier I met. But those were violent times. I got back at 11.30pm and my parents were expecting me home at 5.30pm.” He points towards the white cinema screen behind us. “By the time I got back their faces were that colour. God, they were furious.”
The opening sections of Five Minutes of Heavenremind us just how grim Northern Ireland was in the 1970s. I wonder if he thinks Ballymena is less divided now than it was then.
“I think it is certainly less divided,” he tells me later. “I can’t say that for sure. Since I left, 20 housing estates have been built. It’s like everywhere else that way. I can no longer put my finger on the pulse. But, you know, I remember that we shared the streets when I grew up. I was never made to feel weird or strange or an outsider. Nobody pointed at me and said, ‘He’s a Taig. He’s a Catholic’. I don’t remember that happening.”
This is interesting. Some years ago, Neeson got into a bit of a media fracas, when, after tangled murmurings from his hometown, he refused the freedom of Ballymena. The story is still a bit confused, but it seems that some members of the Democratic Unionist Party objected to the offer and, to avoid controversy, he stepped aside.
“Well, it was proposed that I get the freedom,” he says. “Which is a very great honour. Then I began to hear that some people were saying that Ian Paisley deserved it more. ‘I mean this guy is only an actor!’ they were saying. Maybe they’re right. So I eventually decided just to step away from it.”
Neeson, raised a Catholic, admits that Ian Paisley’s influence permeated Ballymena. The young actor would sometimes sneak into the preacher’s church and marvel at his Old Testament fervour and ability to capture a congregation.
It took a long time for Neeson to nudge past the DUP leader and become Ballymena’s most famous son. He is one of those stars who ascended the ladder rung by rung, without making too many dangerous upward lunges.
Following a successful spell at the Lyric, he made his way to Dublin where he took various roles in the Project Arts Centre. During his time in the capital, he was spotted by John Boorman and offered a role in Excalibur.
While working on that film, he met and began dating Helen Mirren and, setting his sights on the next rung, he moved to London.
In an interview in the New York Times, Gabriel Byrne remembered calling round to discover his friend painting Mirren’s house. “I can’t get a job,” Neeson said. “The worst of it is, I’m living with a woman who has a mountain of scripts delivered to her every morning.” Eventually, he faced the terrible inevitable and moved to Los Angeles.
A decent role in Sam Raimi's Darkmanfollowed. Then, in the 1990s, real stardom arrived with Schindler's Listand Michael Collins. I wonder whether he still carries insecurities from the old days. Does he ever suspect he doesn't deserve this fame? "Oh, every time I see Anthony Hopkins I think that. I have always felt that I have, to some extent, been getting away with it." Neeson goes on to admit to a degree of insecurity. Fair enough. Even the biggest movie star knows that the audience can turn against him at any minute of any day. Still, there must have been a point in his career – the opening of Schindler's List? Star Wars: The Phantom Menacebecoming a staggering smash? – when he realised that the decades of struggle were over and he had properly made it.
"Well, it's funny. Probably just the other week when Takenopened. The film was released last year in Europe and you've been able to download it for weeks from Korea or wherever, but it still became the biggest film at the box office in the US."
When I begin to explain the plot to the audience – CIA man Neeson beats-up half of Paris as he tries to get his daughter back from sex traffickers – the actor smiles wryly and begins to snigger. He clearly appreciates the irony in the fact that a film he did "between jobs" has become the most successful ever featuring his name at the head of the credits. ( The Phantom Menacemade much more, of course, but in that film he was part of an ensemble.) So box-office takings are some measure of personal success? "Look. That's how Hollywood assesses your worth. They look down this list of takings. Yes. I'm afraid so."
At any rate, life changed for Neeson when, after auditioning repeatedly for the role of Oskar Schindler, he met Steven Spielberg’s mother-in-law after a play and she identified him as the only man for the job.
“I’ve been told everyone was chasing that role,” he says, slightly guiltily. “I know that Kevin Costner, who was a huge star, wanted the part and he would have been very good. I believe Robert Duvall was mentioned at one stage.”
The film secured Neeson an Oscar nomination and confirmed his status as the first man you call when you require an avatar of dignified charisma. Next year, he hopes to begin shooting a biopic of Abraham Lincoln with Steven Spielberg and – now that Henry Fonda is no longer with us – it’s hard to think of a single actor better suited to the role.
Until then, we have the impressive Five Minutes of Heaven. Any treatment of the Troubles has the potential to stir up discontent and, with that in mind, Neeson appears to have approached his research with particular care. After the public interview, we return to the hotel and he ponders the responsibility he took on. I note, for example, that he did not meet Alistair Little until the film was almost finished.
“I met him on the last day,” he says. “I was conscious to an extent that I didn’t want to be reminded of how physically unlike him I was. I didn’t want to clutter up my head. I just didn’t want that.”
What do the former UVF man and the brother of the man he killed think of the film? “I think they have mixed feelings about it,” he says. “They are so sure that their process is not about reconciliation that I doubt these two men will ever be in the same room. I doubt they will ever shake hands.” By way of contrast, Nesbitt and Neeson, two Northern Irish stars separated by a little over a decade, seem to have become the best of pals.
"Oh he's like the brother I never had," he says. "He is so very easy to get on with. I didn't know him before, but I did discover that his grandmother lived on our street when I was growing up. She was a very dear woman who had an immaculate garden. We always called her Mrs Nesbitt, of course, and I didn't know her name until I met Jimmy. She was called Kitty. And I said, 'That's my mother's name too, and I never knew.' Hey, Jimmy! We're talking about your granny." He gestures to Nesbitt, who is circling. The two men are about to be driven to appear on Tubridy Tonight.
Following that interview, Liam returns to the hotel, goes to the airport and then jets to LA. One wonders when he will ever see his family again. Neeson, who is married to Natasha Richardson, actor and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, lives in New York State with their two sons. It will, he says, be another two weeks or so before he gets home.
“The children have American accents now,” he says with a tolerant smile. “You know they are influenced by their peers. I speak the way I speak. My wife has an English accent. But they travel a lot and we try to expose them to European culture. So they are Irish and they’re English and . . .”
Neeson notices that his people are beginning to agitate. “I’m really sorry, Donald, but I am going to have to leave it at that.” He heaves himself on to his feet, allows himself to be bundled into a car and roars off for Donnybrook. Less than 10 hours later he will be in the air, on his way to the Oscars.
It is exciting being Liam Neeson. But it’s hard work.
Five Minutes of Heavenis on limited release