Liam Neeson Biography

Irish actor Liam Neeson is known for his brainy-yet-brawny persona in serious dramas such as Schindler’s List (1993, directed by Steven Spielberg) and Michael Collins (1996, with Julia Roberts), as well as in he-man thrillers such as the Taken series (2008-14).

Liam Neeson was nominated for an Oscar for his role as heroic World War II businessman Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List, and the film put him on Hollywood’s A-list. In 1999 he secured his place in sci-fi history by playing the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn as George Lucas‘s Star Wars series returned from a long hiatus with the prequel The Phantom Menace and its 2002 sequel, Attack of the Clones.

Long seen as a thoughtful man in nuanced roles, Liam Neeson reinvented himself as a straight-up action hero in Taken (2008), playing a former CIA agent who tracks down the evil Albanians who have kidnapped his daughter. Taken grossed $225 million worldwide, about 10 times its production budget, and suddenly Neeson was brooding his way through a string of similar gun-toting, fist-fighting action pics, including Unknown (2011), The Grey (2012), Non-Stop (2014), and Run All Night (2015). He played off his stern persona for laughs in The Lego Movie (2014), among others.

Liam Neeson’s other films include the early Sam Raimi thriller Darkman (1990, with Frances McDormand), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002, with Harrison Ford), Martin Scorsese‘s Gangs of New York (2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio) and the hit romance Love Actually (2003, starring Hugh Grant). He’s also appeared with Christian Bale in the Batman movie Batman Begins (2005), and voiced Aslan the lion in the C.S. Lewis-inspired Narnia films The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008, starring Ben Barnes).