The Untold Truth Of Liam Neeson

You may know him as a man with "a very particular set of skills," but there's so much more to actor Liam Neeson than his intimidating role in Taken. In reality, long before he went from arthouse favorite to action hero, Neeson was always a bit of a jack of all trades rather than a specialist. He once hoped to become a professional boxer, he attended a technical college and considered becoming a computer science major, he had a short-lived teaching career, and he even spent some time working for Guinness.

It took Neeson some time to figure out that he was talented enough to turn acting into a stable career. But how did he go from working odd jobs in Belfast to landing major roles in Hollywood blockbusters? How did his upbringing in Northern Ireland influence his choice of roles later in life? And which career goals does he still want to fulfill? It's time to learn a little more about the man behind some of your favorite action movies. This is the untold truth of Liam Neeson.

In 1971, Liam Neeson enrolled at Queen's University in Belfast, intending to study physics and computer science. However, he eventually dropped out to take a job with Guinness. He never returned to school, and after working many odd jobs in the following years, he followed his calling and became an actor.

Although he was a gifted math student, the teacher from his technical college who wrote his academic reference for his university application had a feeling that Neeson would go down a different path. In his recommendation, he noted, "Liam's chief interest would appear to be amateur dramatics, in which he has played the leading role in the last two productions of the College play." Neeson may have felt like a jack of all trades when he was young, but his acting talents always stood out.

In 2009, Neeson was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Queen's. Understandably, he was excited that he was finally able to tell his mother that he had graduated from college.

Before making a full-time living as an actor, Liam Neeson bounced around from job to job. For a short time, he worked as a teacher. But he struggled when it came to disciplining students — he found that his students had trouble settling down and being quiet before the lesson began, and one day, the chaos in his classroom spiraled out of control.

"This particular kid did not want to settle down, he wanted to disrupt the whole class. So I went over to him and asked him to leave the classroom and stand outside. The next thing he pulled a knife on me," Neeson explained to the Irish Post. "My reaction was to punch him, which I shouldn't have done but I felt threatened." After this altercation, Neeson was promptly fired from his position. Shortly after the incident, he decided that he was ready to seriously pursue acting as a career. He joined the Belfast Lyric Players' Theatre, and the rest is history.

In 1977, Liam Neeson landed his first film role. An evangelical Christian group came to the theater he was working at in Belfast seeking actors for their film, Pilgrim's Progress. Neeson decided to audition, and he was cast as an evangelist. Later in the film, he also portrayed Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. Although it was a valuable experience for Neeson, he wasn't paid much for his work, and he remembered that he usually couldn't wait for each day of shooting to be over. And because the film crew was devoutly religious, they spent a lot of time praying on set. 

When Neeson reflected on his experience making Pilgrim's Progress years later, he said that it taught him an important lesson about being patient on set. "You're ready to do your thing, and then, 'You have to wait ten minutes. That cloud has to pass,'" Neeson said in an interview with GQ. "Henry Fonda's definition of screen acting is learning how to wait. Absolutely right."

In 2009, Liam Neeson starred in the thriller Taken as former CIA operative Bryan Mills, who has to track down his daughter and a friend after they're kidnapped by human traffickers while traveling in Paris. The film became an international hit, and Neeson's fame rose to new heights. However, when he signed on to play Mills, he didn't think that the project would be so successful. In fact, he assumed that hardly anyone would see it. But he was so excited to work on an action film that he wasn't too concerned with ticket sales.

"I thought, 'Well, this is going to go straight-to-video. A short little European thriller, it might play okay for a couple weeks in France and then it will go straight-to-video,'" Neeson told Entertainment Weekly. But his expectations were wildly exceeded upon the film's release — it drew in large audiences in France, and then ticket sales began skyrocketing in other countries, too. It even spawned two sequels and a television series.

While Liam Neeson was working on the film Nell, the cast and crew spent time by the lake where they were shooting. The prop master, Ellen Freund, got him hooked on what was to become his favorite hobby: fly fishing. He needed something to do while the cameras weren't rolling, so Freund taught him how to cast. Her instincts were correct — Neeson instantly fell in love with fly fishing, and it was tough to pull him away from practicing when they needed him for a scene.

Neeson will be the first to admit that he rarely catches any fish. But he simply loves the challenge. "The thrill for me is being on a river with my pouch and rod, and I know there's a fish over there, or at least I think there is, so I'll do five or six casts. That fly's not working, take it off, put on another one, try again. Before you know it, three hours will have gone past," Neeson told Men's Journal. "You're working all the time — but it's a different kind of work." Fly fishing has also given him plenty of excuses to travel, and New Zealand has become his favorite destination for fishing trips.

Liam Neeson's career really got started in theater back in Belfast, but today, the vast majority of people know him as a film actor. Despite Neeson's overwhelming success in Hollywood, he still misses the thrill of acting on stage in front of live audiences. From his early days as a promising young drama student to his time with his Belfast theater troupe, he spent years performing in plays — and he actually regrets that he's stayed away from it for so long. 

"If I had one regret, it's that I haven't been onstage for 12 years, and I just feel I should, at some point, go back again," Neeson said in a 2020 interview with Parade. "I'm looking for, hopefully, a new piece of writing, a new play that I could do. Preferably not on Broadway, just off-Broadway somewhere so you don't have that commercial pressure." Although it's been quite a while since Liam Neeson performed onstage, it sounds like we might see him return to the theater in the not-too-distant future.