The movie that stopped Liam Neeson from quitting acting: “Aw fuck, what’s the point?”
In 1993, after more than a decade spent climbing the Hollywood ladder, Liam Neeson reached the pinnacle of the business with Schindler’s List. Starring as the German industrialist who saved more than 1,000 Polish Jews from the Holocaust vaulted the Irishman into the A-list and landed him a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar nomination to boot.
In the wake of his career-making turn in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Best Picture’ winner, though, something strange happened to Neeson. Suddenly, he found himself struggling to get enthused about most of the scripts being sent his way, and he couldn’t fathom how another role could lead him to the same incredible feeling he had while playing Schindler. Worryingly, even though he did make a few films in this period, such as Nell and Rob Roy, Neeson’s lack of excitement had him contemplating the unthinkable.
“I thought there wouldn’t be a high after Schindler’s List,” Neeson told Hot Press in 1996. “In fact, I thought about just giving up. Well, any script I read after Schindler’s List was like, ‘Aw fuck, what’s the point?’ Which is kind of understandable.”
However, there was a light at the end of Neeson’s tunnel of apathy, and it was a movie he’d been trying to get made for 12 long years. In the ’80s, Heaven’s Gate director Michael Cimino entered pre-production on a biopic of Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary who served as the Irish Republican Army’s Director of Intelligence during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. The Cork man fought against the British using guerrilla warfare, plotting several successful attacks, including the ‘Bloody Sunday’ assassinations of British intelligence agents in November 1920.
Cimino’s movie ultimately fell apart due to budgetary concerns, but Neeson was in the mix at that point to play Collins. Then, after Schindler’s List, a new Michael Collins film came around under the stewardship of Interview with the Vampire’s Neil Jordan, and he chose Neeson to play the role that had always fascinated him. “I just feel great about it,” Neeson said. “I don’t want this to sound like a brag, but it feels like I’ve done it, you know? Other movies aren’t interesting me, at the minute.”
Neeson, you see, grew up a devout Catholic in the predominantly Protestant town of Ballymena in Northern Ireland. His grandmother came from Waterford, in southern Ireland, and was a fierce supporter of Éamon de Valera, the president of Ireland from 1959 to 1973, and a leading political figure during the War of Independence era. The young boy became familiar with Collins’ name through association with De Valera, as they were spoken in “hushed tones” by his grandmother and other family members. However, he only delved deeply into the history of his country when he was 18 or 19.
Naturally, given the tactics he used and the casualties he caused to achieve his goals, Collins has always been a controversial figure in Ireland. To most Irish republicans, he is remembered as a freedom fighter, but to Brits and Protestant families in the North, he is little more than a terrorist.
Neeson admitted that he knew accepting the part would make him a lightning rod, especially among British and Irish journalists and critics. Still, he felt it was worthwhile to portray a man he considered “an unsung hero” who was “destined to be on this planet for a short time,” referring to Collins’ murder in an ambush by a former British Army sniper in 2022.
In the end, with such personal passion serving as a backdrop to a real-life tale that existed almost entirely in shades of grey, it’s no wonder Neeson acknowledged, “The truth was very murky and dark. People don’t want to think about it or talk about it.”
