The scene that made Liam Neeson feel like a pillock: “That was what they paid me millions for”
Believe it or not, Liam Neeson still hasn’t officially retired from action movies. Then again, it’s not that difficult to believe, since he’s been talking about hanging up his ass-kicking boots for over a decade, and it’s reasonable to assume that money is what keeps changing his mind.
The main reason the Academy Award nominee kept hinting that his days of throat-punching henchmen were nearing their end was because he was getting on a bit, and his performance in the Naked Gun reboot suggested that yet another reinvention could be on the cards, with Neeson as a slapstick comedian even more unexpected than his rebirth as a middle-aged action hero.
With Guy Moshe’s Hotel Tehran and Mark Vanselow’s The Mongoose in various stages of production, should one of them end up being released any later than June 2027, Neeson will still be cashing cheques and snapping necks at the age of 75, making a complete and utter mockery of his vow that his days were numbered, since he’d been saying it since he turned 60.
If there’s one thing that’s even more ridiculous than an old guy headlining an action flick, it’s an old guy acting opposite things that aren’t there while wearing a silly costume and surrounded entirely by a green screen. Of course, he’s no stranger to that, either, and filming a fight scene opposite another distinguished thespian, Ralph Fiennes, in Wrath of the Titans, cursed him with a sense of embarrassment.
“We both felt like pillocks,” he admitted to Dennis King. The reason was that he and his scene partner were surrounded by “hundreds and hundreds of extras and stuff” while wearing fake long wigs, fake beards, and bulky armour, pretending to throw lightning bolts and various other forms of non-existent godly magic at each other, which was par for the course when they played Zeus and Hades, respectively.
“I’m looking at him to see what he’s doing, and he’s looking at me to see what I’m doing,” Neeson recalled. “It all felt a bit silly. But in scenes like that, you just have to go for it.” He looked and felt like a total knob, but there was one incredibly lucrative saving grace: “That was what they paid me millions for,” he added.
Another positive was that it wasn’t his first rodeo. After all, Neeson played a significant role in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which was the most green-screen-heavy movie that had ever been made at the time. Then there was his mo-cap turn in A Monster Calls, with the veteran admitting that performing in a skin-tight leotard, before “the computer nerds are giving you this digital makeup,” made him feel “like a twat.”
Anyone who signs on for a swords-and-sandals fantasy blockbuster that trades in magic and monsters will know exactly what they’re getting themselves into, but that didn’t make it any easier for Neeson to wrap his head around the concept of pretending to have a brutal onscreen brawl with Fiennes.
In reality, all they had to do was stand a few feet apart and wave their arms at each other a bit.
