The role that turned Liam Neeson into a nervous wreck: “Oh, my knees were shaking”
Having spent the better part of two decades snapping necks and cashing cheques as the action genre’s premiere elder statesman of ass-kicking, nervousness isn’t something Liam Neeson has been forced to contend with for a long time.
He did have his trepidations about whether audiences would continue to buy into the idea of him starring in so many trigger-happy thrillers, but considering he first voiced those concerns almost ten years ago and he keeps signing on to wear leather jackets and make life a living hell for henchmen, his wariness about growing too long in the tooth hasn’t manifested quite yet.
Even before his post-Taken reinvention as a grizzled badass, Neeson was cast as stern, wizened, and formidable father figures and/or mentors who relied on gravitas and exposition to get their point across, so it’s been a fair while since he’s even played a character that even had the potential to reduce him to a nervous wreck.
Of course, things weren’t the same at the beginning of his career, and the relatively fresh-faced Neeson was absolutely bricking it when he was forced to not only step outside of his comfort zone but do it in front of an icon. It goes without saying that musical drama has never been his forte, but in 1986, he was cast as Trotter in director Andrei Konchalovsky’s stage adaptation, Duet for One.
Although Neeson was almost ten years removed from his screen debut and was hardly wet behind the ears, the prospect of belting out a tune in front of a legendary songstress of stage and screen who’d won an Academy Award, a Bafta, a Primetime Emmy, five Golden Globes, and a Grammy for roles that required them to stretch their pipes was the most daunting he’d ever faced.
“I did a movie once that nobody saw called Duet for One. It was based on the life of Jacqueline du Pré, a cellist who suffered from multiple sclerosis,” Neeson explained to The Guardian. “It was Julie Andrews, lovely Alan Bates, Max von Sydow and myself. Julie Andrews was playing Jacqueline du Pré. I played her sort of lover, a third-rate singer in a working men’s club.”
In one scene, Neeson was required to sing ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’, which would have been terrifying enough even if he didn’t have to do it in front of the star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. “I’ve never been more nervous in all my life,” he admitted. “Oh, my knees were shaking.”
Not that he needed to elaborate, but his recollection was nonetheless evocative: “Fuck me, I’m singing to Julie Andrews, you know? She can hold a tune.” That, she certainly could, and it wouldn’t be doing a disservice to Neeson’s performance to say that Duet for One made it pretty clear he didn’t have a future in the musical genre.
