{"id":309771,"date":"2025-08-01T17:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/309771\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T17:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:09:10","slug":"a-particular-set-of-skills-how-liam-neeson-went-from-master-actor-to-deadpan-naked-gun-spoofery-liam-neeson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/309771\/","title":{"rendered":"A particular set of skills: how Liam Neeson went from \u2018master actor\u2019 to deadpan Naked Gun spoofery | Liam Neeson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Neeson may have gained pop-culture immortality for his gravelly growl of a certain line of dialogue in the 2008 hostage thriller Taken \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills\u201d \u2013 but the release of his new film, a reboot of the classic spoof cop movie The Naked Gun<\/a> represents another remarkable turn in Neeson\u2019s distinguished career, which has taken in heavyweight prestige dramas, historical biopics, blockbusting science fiction, superhero epics and head-cracking action cinema.<\/p>\n

In The Naked Gun, Neeson has for the first time taken the lead role in an out-and-out comedy. He plays Frank Drebin Jr, the police-detective son of Leslie Nielsen\u2019s Frank Drebin in the original. Created by the celebrated comedy team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, The Naked Gun was released in 1988, with Nielsen featuring in two sequels, The Naked Gun 2\u00bd: The Smell of Fear from 1991 and Naked Gun 33\u2153: The Final Insult in 1994, as well as the preceding TV series Police Squad!, which aired in 1982. Neeson\u2019s intense, unflappable acting style has been acclaimed by critics as a perfect match for Nielsen\u2019s celebrated stone-face delivery; the Guardian\u2019s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw said that<\/a> Neeson \u201cdeadpans it impeccably\u201d, while the Telegraph\u2019s Robbie Collin writes<\/a> that Neeson \u201cdelivers his dialogue with a gravelly matter-of-factness that only compounds its lunacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Neeson in the \u2018dad action\u2019 film Taken, 2008, which revived his career. Photograph: 20 Century Fox\/Allstar<\/p>\n

At the age of 73, Neeson\u2019s current status as the star of a hit mainstream comedy \u2013 augmented by rumours of a romance<\/a> with his co-star Pamela Anderson \u2013 is a world away from his emergence as a bona fide leading man in the early 1990s, when he put his teenage proficiency in boxing to good use in the Scotland-set drama The Big Man, bagged an Oscar nomination for playing Oskar Schindler in Schindler\u2019s List, and nobly donned plaid, kilt and sporran as 18th century highlander Rob Roy.<\/p>\n

Neeson\u2019s ability to project a weighty sense of gravitas in these wildly differing roles was compounded by his casting as Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, in Neil Jordan\u2019s 1996 biopic, the most politically sensitive \u2013 and closest to home \u2013 of his early leading roles. Born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Neeson was raised Catholic but later said he was, ironically, inspired to become an actor after watching the firebrand Protestant leader Rev Ian Paisley preach, saying: \u201cIt was incredible to watch this 6ft-plus man just bible-thumping away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neeson, right, with Ewan McGregor in 1999\u2019s Star Wars: Episode I \u2013 The Phantom Menace. Photograph: Lucasfilm\/Allstar<\/p>\n

Neeson\u2019s career took its first unexpected deviation in the late 1990s when he was cast as Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I \u2013 The Phantom Menace, George Lucas\u2019s return to the Star Wars universe in 1999, with Lucas describing Neeson as \u201ca master actor, who the other actors will look up to\u201d. This excursion into fantasy-blockbuster moviemaking was cemented with a role as principal antagonist Ra\u2019s al Ghul in Christopher Nolan\u2019s Batman Begins<\/a> in 2005, and lending his voice to Aslan the lion in the three Narnia films from the same period: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Neeson\u2019s standing in the industry also allowed him to take smaller roles in landmark films in the same period, including Gangs of New York and Love Actually.<\/p>\n

He had, however, lost his leading-man status in Hollywood, and it was the success of Taken<\/a> \u2013 a French production, written by Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel \u2013 that returned him to the spotlight. Neeson later said he was \u201cstunned\u201d by its impact, adding: \u201cI really thought it would be kind of a little side road from my so-called career. Really thought it would go straight to video.\u201d Taken\u2019s box office receipts amounted to nine times its $25m (\u00a319m) budget and virtually inaugurated the \u201cdad action\u201d movie, thrillers featuring leads in late middle age; it is also the film with which Neeson is arguably now most identified with. Neeson went on to make a string of dad action films, including Unknown, Non-Stop, The Ice Road and Retribution.<\/p>\n

Neeson\u2019s reinvention as an action star coincided with a period of personal tragedy, after the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, in a skiing accident<\/a> in 2009. The pair had met in 1993 while co-starring in a Broadway production of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s play Anna Christie, and married a year later. Neeson later said that grief over her death was partly responsible for his withdrawing from the lead role in Steven Spielberg\u2019s biopic of Abraham Lincoln, released in 2012, in which he was replaced by Daniel Day-Lewis.<\/p>\n

His role in the Steven Spielberg-directed Schindler\u2019s List was Oscar nominated. Photograph: Atlas Photography\/JB Ent<\/p>\n

More recently Neeson was heavily criticised, and subsequently apologised<\/a>, for saying that, in his youth, he had gone out looking to \u201ckill\u201d a random black man in revenge for a sexual assault on a friend. Neeson had mentioned the incident in 2019 during the press tour for another action film, Cold Pursuit, later saying: \u201cThe horror of what happened to my friend ignited irrational thoughts that do not represent the person I am. In trying to explain those feelings today, I missed the point and hurt many people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neeson\u2019s career, however, appears to have been relatively unaffected by the controversy, as well as his comment<\/a> in 2018 that the recent wave of sexual misconduct allegations in the entertainment industry was \u201cbit of a witch-hunt\u201d. With The Naked Gun commanding significant media attention \u2013 as much for speculation on Neeson\u2019s personal life as for the film itself \u2013 the actor\u2019s stock is as high as it has ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Neeson may have gained pop-culture immortality for his gravelly growl of a certain line of dialogue in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-309771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114954617753565493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}