‘GoldenEye’: The role that almost cost Liam Neeson his marriage
Careers can regularly place a strain on marriages regardless of either spouse’s occupation, but there’s nonetheless a level of understanding in place when both halves of a couple have the same job. However, despite being in a relationship with a fellow actor, Liam Neeson was warned that taking on a particular role would have been the end of it.
One of the benefits of being shacked up with somebody who does the exact same thing is that they understand the ins, outs, ups, downs, highs, and lows that come along with it. Neeson first met Natasha Richardson when they performed in a Broadway play together in 1993, and by the following summer, they’d gotten hitched.
Cementing their on and offscreen bond, the pair took second and third billing behind Jodie Foster’s title character in her sophomore directorial effort Nell, which was shot during their initial courtship and released just five months after they’d tied the knot. It was domestic bliss until a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came calling that Neeson was understandably intrigued by.
At the time, he was a well-known figure in Hollywood and an Academy Award-nominated performer, having made the ‘Best Actor’ shortlist for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, but he wasn’t a movie star by the strictest definition. Playing one of the most iconic characters in not only cinema but pop culture, in general, would have changed all that until a foot was put down so firmly that Neeson wasn’t left with any other choice.
“My lovely wife said to me while we were shooting Nell down in the Carolinas, ‘Liam, I want to tell you something: if you play James Bond, we’re not getting married,'” he told Rolling Stone. “So I would tease her by going behind her back, making my fingers as though I’m holding a gun.” Not only that, but he’d also hum the unmistakable theme tune just to rile up Richardson, entirely for his own amusement. Or, as he put it, “I loved doing that shit.”
After the suave secret agent’s longest-ever sabbatical from the big screen, the eyes of the filmic world were on GoldenEye as the first instalment in the Bond franchise since Timothy Dalton’s swansong in 1989’s Licence to Kill began the exhaustive search for the latest 007.
Neeson was tall, handsome, charming, a Northern Ireland native, and looked good in a tux, all qualities required to convince as MI6’s finest. He admitted that he held several informal conversations with the producers about potentially taking on the role, only for Richardson to instantly rule him out of contention by stating in no uncertain terms that if he were to commit to the character, their impending wedding would never happen.
It was a chance very few actors would contemplate rejecting, given what it would mean from a fame and fortune perspective, but Neeson didn’t think twice about it when his then-fiance laid down the law.
