Behind the tough-guy image of his movie roles, we found a philosophical and compassionate soul

Liam Neeson is nothing if not paternal. I learned this in 1998, as a young woman in my 20s, when I met the actor in Los Angeles for an assignment. Neeson gamely went shopping at trendy boutiques, folding his towering frame into tiny dressing rooms — a good sport about every ask. We ate lunch and dessert.

Then, as the day wrapped up and the work concluded, he asked me about myself, something actors rarely did, most of them eager to leave the journalist behind as quickly as possible.

As we waited for the check, I briefly lamented my current romantic entanglement. Neeson leaned back, listened and, when I was done whining, offered piercing counsel about my unsuitable suitor.

 

 

 

 

As he drove me back to my hotel, Neeson spoke lovingly of his wife, actress Natasha Richardson (who, in 2009, would pass away from a head injury sustained in a skiing accident), of the poetry to be found in a marriage, of the capabilities of strong women, of his three brilliant sisters and his steadfast mother, and of the long tradition of generations of women compromising for men who don’t deserve it.

By the time I got out of the car, my would-be boyfriend was toast.

Neeson has been acting since age 11, when he accepted a part in a school play to impress a girl back in his native Northern Ireland, and he has always baked compassion and attention into everything he does, from performances to personal relationships to parenting.

He was raised to believe that everybody mattered and that making things right was well worth the effort. On top of that, he says, “there was a war going on where I lived for 30 years.” As a result, Neeson is not a person who half-steps or shrugs or takes any kindness for granted.

JOHN RUSSO

Tall, with hands as big as bread loaves and a gravel-bed brogue of a voice, Neeson could enter any space and make others uncomfortable for sport. Instead, he does the opposite. He strives to create solace in his orbit, to embrace, to help — holdovers from his modest, working-class roots, where getting by required ceaseless effort without complaint.

It’s little surprise that, over the decades, Neeson has played every variety of father figure on offer: all men who do their level best to stand up and lead as they reckon with their onerous, flawed humanity.

There was Holocaust hero Oskar Schindler; Scottish folk hero Rob Roy; the tormented and tenderhearted Jean Valjean of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables; and Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (the first Jedi in the Star Wars universe to manifest consciousness after death).

Neeson has even voiced the animated lion in The Chronicles of Narnia series, playing no less a paternal figure than God himself. He has also portrayed Zeus (Clash of the Titans, 2010).

And then there’s Taken — the revenge thriller in which Neeson becomes a stand-in for all righteous-warrior dads who’ve ever fantasized about doling out justice on behalf of their wronged daughters and wives.

It’s a film turned franchise that, thanks to Neeson’s committed, elevated performance, lifted what could have been a standard B-movie run-and-gun to the action-film canon and gave birth to a whole fresh genre of geri-action movies — a development that tickles Neeson no end.

“If I’m sent an action script,” he tells me, “I’ll say to my agent, ‘There’s seven fight scenes. I kill a bunch of guys that need to be killed. Do the producers know my age?’ ”

Which is not to suggest that Neeson intends to retire. When you come from a place where strife is the norm, where circumstances remind you every day that life is cruel and random, you don’t quit when you’re ahead, even if you are entering your 70s.

His brush with death in 2000 — after a hellish motorcycle accident that broke his pelvis and had doctors not expecting him to last the night — only reinforced what Neeson has always known: You seize the day, and you do it with the awareness that you are less special than lucky.