Northern Irish actor Liam Neeson made his film debut more than 40 years ago and returns to cinemas in February with Cold Pursuit.
A leading man in Schindler’s List (1993) and Rob Roy (1995) and a quality supporting player for the likes of Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, Neeson has done it all, appearing equally at home in lavish blockbusters such as George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels as he is playing a Portuguese Jesuit missionary tortured into apostasy in feudal Japan in Silence.
Most recently, he brought his suave authority to two of this awards season’s most critically acclaimed dramas: Steve McQueen’s Widows and the Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs from Joel and Ethan Coen.
Aside from voice acting, his real bread-and-butter in recent times has been the action genre, in which he has led some of the most ludicrous mid-market thrillers ever shot, many with Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra at the helm.
Here’s our selection of his 10 most implausible outings.
“They’re still throwing serious money at me to do that stuff,” the actor told an audience at the Toronto Film Festival in 2017, with refreshing honesty. “I’m like: ‘Guys, I’m sixty-f***ing-five.’ Audiences are eventually going to go: ‘Come on.’”
Interpreted as a hint he was about to holster his Beretta for the final time, Neeson delighted fans when he subsequently clarifed the remark: “I’m going to be doing action movies until they bury me in the ground. I'm unretired.”
