You might be unaware of this, but before he became an action star in his late fifties in films like Taken and The Grey Liam Neeson was a highly-regarded actor. Okay, that’s not really news to anybody, but while Neeson has gone onto an unlikely career revitalization as a greying action hero he admits that he misses where he got started in the first place: the stage.
He tells the Belfast Telegraph after being awarded the Freedom honor of his home town of Ballymena, Northern Ireland, “I would love to tread the boards again at some point. It’s been four-and-a-half years since I was on the stage so it’s time to flex that muscle again.”
In fact, Neeson even has a theatre in mind where he would want to appear. Naturally, it’s where he started: the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. He explains, “I’d love to do it at the Lyric. We’re actively trying to find something, you know. I’m a single parent so it’s hard trying to distance myself for the moment.”
As for other projects, Neeson reveals that he has long been considering starring in a biopic about the Reverend Iain Paisley, the former First Minister of Northern Ireland, whose sermons inspired a young Neeson when Paisley was a minister. However, Neeson confesses he has yet to find a suitable script. He explains, “I have been approached, yeah. I’ve read a couple of scripts based on the Reverend Iain Paisley, but they were atrocious. They’re really bad, they are. There’s a saying – ‘If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage’.”
