William John Neeson OBE (born 7 June 1952) is an actor from Northern Ireland. He has received several accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Tony Awards. In 2020, he was placed 7th on The Irish Times list of Ireland's 50 Greatest Film Actors. Neeson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000.
In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast for two years. His early film roles include Excalibur (1981), The Bounty (1984), The Mission (1986), and Husbands and Wives (1992). He rose to prominence portraying Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993) for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. He followed by starring in Nell (1994), Rob Roy (1995), Michael Collins (1996), and Les Misérables (1998). He took blockbuster roles portraying Qui-Gon Jinn in George Lucas' space opera Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins (2005) and Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy (2005–2010). He also starred in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002), the romantic comedy Love Actually (2003), and the drama Kinsey (2004).
Beginning in 2009, Neeson cemented himself as an action star with the action thriller series Taken (2008–2014), The A-Team (2010), Unknown (2011), The Grey (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012), Non-Stop (2013), A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014), and The Commuter (2018). He also starred in Martin Scorsese's religious epic Silence (2016), the fantasy drama A Monster Calls (2016), Steve McQueen's heist drama Widows (2018), the Coen brothers' western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and the romantic drama Ordinary Love (2019).
Neeson is also known for his work on stage. He made his Broadway debut in 1993 with his performance as Matt Burke in the revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination. He then starred as Oscar Wilde in David Hare's The Judas Kiss in 1998. He received his second Tony Award nomination for his performance in the 2002 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
Early life
Neeson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, the son of cook Katherine "Kitty" Neeson (née Brown) and primary school caretaker Bernard "Barney" Neeson. Raised Catholic, he was named Liam after a local priest. The third of four siblings, he has three sisters, Elizabeth, Bernadette, and Rosaleen. He attended St Patrick's College, Ballymena from 1963 to 1967, and later recalled that his love of drama began there.
He said that growing up as a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant town made him cautious, and once said he felt like a "second-class citizen" there, but has also said he was never made to feel "inferior or even different" at the town's predominantly Protestant technical college. "It would be colourful to imagine I had a rebellious, uproarious Irish background," he has said, "but the facts were much greyer. Irish, yes. But all that nationalistic stuff, crying into your Guinness and singing rebel songs—that was never my scene." He has described himself as "out of touch" with the politics and history of Northern Ireland until becoming aware of protests by fellow students after Bloody Sunday, a massacre in Derry in 1972 during the Troubles, which encouraged him to learn more local history. In a 2009 interview, he said, "I never stop thinking about . I've known guys and girls who have been perpetrators of violence and victims. Protestants and Catholics. It's part of my DNA."
At age nine, Neeson began boxing lessons at the All Saints Youth Club, and went on to win a number of regional titles before quitting at 17. He acted in school productions during his teens. His interest in acting and decision to become an actor were also influenced by Ian Paisley, founder of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), into whose Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster he sneaked. He said, " 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." In 1971, he joined a physics and computer science course at Queen's University Belfast before leaving to work for the Guinness Brewery. At Queen's, he discovered a talent for football and was spotted by Seán Thomas at Bohemian FC. There was a club trial in Dublin and Neeson played one game as a substitute against Shamrock Rovers FC, but was not offered a contract.
