The one role Liam Neeson regrets he didn’t get the chance to play again: “I’m just too old”
Even before his late-career reinvention as one of the industry’s marquee action heroes, Liam Neeson was starting to grow fond of reprising a role or two. Since he gained his second wind punching disposable henchmen in the face, he’s only grown fonder.
No stranger to a sequel, Neeson has voiced Aslan in three Chronicles of Narnia movies, headlined the Taken trilogy as Bryan Mills made several returns to the Star Wars universe as Qui-Gon Jinn, appeared in two-thirds of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight triptych, embodied the godly figure of Zeus in Clash and Wrath of the Titans, and voiced a raccoon in The Nut Job and its sequel.
That doesn’t include his standalone outings in sequels either, which saw him made to look shorter by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry follow-up The Dead Pool, cameos in the second Anchorman and Ted flicks, or Men in Black: International. Neeson knows his way around a franchise, even if there’s one part he would have desperately loved to have played again before getting too long in the tooth.
Then again, he was probably too old the first time he played it. The actor earned a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actor – Drama’ as the title character in writer and director Neil Jordan’s 1996 biopic Michael Collins, delivering one of his finest turns as the figure who became a leading light in the Irish battle for independence against Britain in the early 20th century.
The real Collins died when he was assassinated in August 1922 at the age of 31, whereas Neeson was 44 when the movie was released. He just about passed muster back then, even if there was a palpable sense of regret that he only got to play him once.
“I’m just too old, but I would love to go back to Michael Collins,” he admitted to Collider. “He was one of the founding fathers of the modern Irish Republic, and he’s still very, very highly controversial. Many people would say that he’s the founding father of modern terrorism. That is debatable. I would have loved to have seen that process of him sitting down with Churchill. He became very, very good friends with the Minister of Defence. There were these extraordinary British politicians and, across the table, was Michael Collins and some of his associates, and his knees were shaking.”
He was almost a decade and a half older than Collins ever got to be the first time around, so it would be safe to say he won’t get his wish. Then again, with de-aging technology becoming one of Hollywood’s favourite new toys, he technically could if he really wanted to. That said, it’s not the type of project studios would be falling over themselves to give a green light, even if it would make Neeson happy.
