He is best known for his roles in the Oscars-winning Schindler’s List and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. His body of work has earned him nominations for numerous awards, including the Oscar. But quite intriguingly he hasn’t won any major acting award, although, Empire Magazine once cited him in its Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time.
At various times in his decades-old acting career, he has been nominated for best actor and other major awards at the prestigious Oscars and Golden Globes. Emerging empty-handed from those nominations must have frustrated and disappointed him to no end.
Born in Ballymena, Ireland in 1952 to Katherine “Kitty” Neeson, a cook, and Bernard “Barney” Neeson, a caretaker at the Ballymena Boys All Saints Primary School, the veteran actor had a chequered young life that included flirting with boxing starting at the tender age of nine.
He was progressing as a boxer and won several regional titles, but opted out of the sport when he turned 17. Neeson also discovered a talent for football and nearly became a professional player in 1971 when he was enrolled as a physics and computer science student at Queen’s University Belfast. He played one game as a substitute but was not offered a contract.
Acting in school productions during his teens and the positive influence by Democratic Unionist Party founder Ian Paisley were what stoked his interest and eventual decision to pursue acting. “He had a magnificent presence and it was incredible to watch him just Bible-thumping away… it was acting, but it was also great acting and stirring too,” says Neeson, recalling his impressions of Paisley.
“It was incredible … it was acting, but it was also great acting and stirring too”
After leaving university, Neeson returned to Ballymena, where he worked in different casual odd jobs, from a forklift operator at Guinness to a truck driver. He also attended teacher training college for two years in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, before again returning to his hometown. In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players’ Theatre in Belfast, where he performed for two years.
He got his first film experience in 1977, playing Jesus Christ and Evangelist in the religious film Pilgrim’s Progress (1978).
Neeson moved to Dublin in 1978 after he was offered a part in Ron Hutchinson’s Says I, Says He, a drama about The Troubles. He acted in several other small productions until filmmaker John Boorman saw him on stage in 1980 in Of Mice and Men and offered him the role of Sir Gawain in the Arthurian film Excalibur.
The ’80s saw him team up with big-name Hollywood stars, including Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins and Robert De Niro. High-profile roles started coming from 1986 and in 1988, he starred alongside Clint Eastwood in the fifth Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool. In 1993, Neeson shot to prominence when he portrayed Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. From there, he starred in other successful films.
A major turning point came in 2008 when Neeson starred in the action thriller Taken, a French-produced film based on a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. The action thriller series brought Neeson back into the center of the public eye and resulted in his being cast in many more big-budget Hollywood movies.
After Taken in 2008, Neeson almost overnight went from a well-loved star of wrenching dramatic fare (and the occasional rom-com) to a legitimately bankable action hero with one of the most recognizable faces on the planet — all at the ripe old age of 56. In the years since, the star has leaned head-on into his new status, cranking out an impressive array of big, dumb, endlessly enjoyable action fare.
While he has not won any Oscars and any other major acting award, Neeson has been listed this year at number seven on The Irish Times’ list of Ireland’s greatest film actors.
He has garnered various highly prestigious accolades some of which are not commonly available or conferred to performing artists. A case in point was his appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire presented by Queen Elizabeth II in her 2000 New Year Honours. In 2016, Irish President Michael D. Higgins conferred to Neeson the Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award by the Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) at the Mansion House in Dublin.
Neeson has a handful of upcoming action flicks. Expected to hit theatres this month is Honest Thief in which he portrays an ageing bank robber who tries to turn himself over to authorities in an attempt to go straight and live an honest life with the woman he loves. In the action-packed bullet-fest The Marksman, Neeson plays the role of a rancher who takes on murderous Mexican drug cartels.
Now 68, Neeson appears ripe for retirement, especially after more than 40 years in Tinseltown. But gauging from published media reports, the late-bloomer action hero appears to be just warming up for more ass-busting and gun-blasting action flicks in the coming months and in the next few years.