Liam Neeson has opened up about the strange experience of losing his mother in the middle of the pandemic and not being able to attend her funeral in person.
Speaking to RTE’s Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show on Friday, Neeson said: "She passed away, she was 94, she had a good innings.
“She passed away last June, which was kinda weird, as in was in the middle of a pandemic, and it was strange for me and my sons in Upstate New York to be watching this funeral ceremony on a screen. Very bizarre.
"I still haven't got my head around it. I think about her every day."
The actor appeared on the show to talk about his latest project, producing an international film on the Tuam Babies scandal.
Neeson described the moment he heard of the horrific discovery.
He said: “A friend of mine, Amy Hynes, she's my walking partner in New York, three years ago, she sent this article by Dan Barry a New York Times journalist and said 'Liam, have you read this?'
"And then I read this article by Dan about Catherine and the discovery of the babies underground, 796 babies who are of course still there in septic tanks.
"I read this, and I couldn't find the words. I'm Irish and I was brought up a Catholic and a very strong Catholic and I was filled with emotion. I was filled with horror, and I was filled with embarrassment.
"For the first time in my life and I've made some 93/94 films, I never felt this way before. I was lying onto my bed, I shot up straight and I thought I'm going to do something about this. Whatever celebrity status I have in the film world, I'm going to do something.”
Neeson met with Catherine Corless, whose revelations about the death and burial of hundreds of children on the former mother and baby home site led to the establishment of the commission to learn more about the Tuam tragedy.
He said: "I was filming in Belfast, and I visited Catherine in Galway and her lovely husband, Aidan three years ago.
“I spent a few hours, and I was just struck by the humility by this ordinary and extraordinary woman and her husband. She filled me in on this extraordinary story.
“So, we're going to do this film, we have a wonderful writer on board, and I told Catherine to be patient with us as the film process can take a long time, for example, Shindler's List took 10 years to get together until we got a script.
“This Tuam Babies (film) will not take 10 years, it's three years already but we're very near completion. Hopefully maybe in a years' time, we will start production on this to tell the story to the world."
He added: “I know the Government has published 3,000 pages which is all well and good. But the bones of these 796 babies are still in these chambers, these septic chambers, under the ground.
"All Catherine wants and all we want is for the dignity to be shown to the babies, to be identified and to be buried and getting that dignity - that's it."
