Liam Neeson is one of Hollywood’s most iconic action heroes. However, he exists in a realm of action stars who got there later in their career. In Hollywood, these larger-than-life figures usually start off kicking butt and taking names and then attempt to transition into less physically demanding roles as they age, or some simply retire altogether. But Liam Neeson is a completely different story.
In 2008, the Irish actor shocked the industry when he starred in the hyper-violent Taken. By this point, he was a solidified dramatic talent, with an Oscar nomination to his name to show for it. However, he was about to reinvent himself. Since that career-shiting moment, Neeson has been systematically working his way through what seems like half the criminal underworld on screen, and the body count in his wake has grown exponentially with each passing year. Despite repeatedly hinting that he’s ready to hang up his guns and retire from the action genre, Liam Neeson continues to surprise audiences by signing on for yet another round of expertly choreographed vengeance.
How ‘Taken’ Kickstarted a Plethora of Liam Neeson Action Movies
It’s fair to say that moviegoers often enjoy seeing actors flip the script, so to speak, and deliver a role that goes against what they’ve become known for. Take comedy actors delving into drama, for example. With Taken, one of the main beauties was that Neeson doesn’t really look like your typical action star. Yes, he’s tall and athletic looking, but he looks like an everyman. However, it is that element that made his role in Taken all the more captivating. Bryan Mills may look like a regular man, but underneath, he’s a lethal killing machine with a “very particular set of skills”.
Not only did Taken resonate with action junkies, it struck a primal chord with fathers everywhere. The film tapped into every parent’s deepest fear and most powerful fantasy: what lengths would you go to protect your child? To that, Liam Neeson became the ultimate dad-hero, and audiences ate it up. As typically happens in Hollywood, the popularity of this film led to two sequels. However, each addition failed to capture the ferocity and spirit of the original, particularly Taken 3, which was a watered down PG-13. Yet, it didn’t matter as Neeson had caught the action bug and was dazzling moviegoers with many more action movies that appeased to their desire for on-screen violence and mayhem.
Is Liam Neeson Now Typecast?
There’s somewhat of a cruel irony in Liam Neeson’s late-career transformation. The man who once commanded the screen in Schindler’s List – earning an Oscar nomination for one of cinema’s most powerful dramatic performances – may have become a victim of his own action success. After Taken proved that audiences couldn’t get enough of vengeful Neeson, Hollywood seemed to forget he was capable of anything else. The numbers tell the story: following the Taken trilogy’s box office dominance, Neeson began churning out action films at an almost industrial pace – typically two per year. Meanwhile, his dramatic and comedic opportunities all but disappeared.
By 2016, knee-deep in what must have felt like an endless pile of scripts about retribution and revenge, Neeson expressed his frustration to The Skinny: “People keep sending me scripts for action movies, and I turn around to my agent and say, ‘Do they know what fecking age I am?’ Maybe another 18 months of them, but then I think audiences won’t want it.”
Yet here we are, nearly a decade later, and Neeson’s prediction proved spectacularly wrong. Since making those comments, he’s delivered a relentless stream of action/thriller films, including Widows, Cold Pursuit, Honest Thief, The Ice Road, The Marksman, Blacklight, Retribution, and In the Land of Saints and Sinners. While some have struggled theatrically, others have found massive success on streaming platforms, proving that audience appetite for Neeson’s particular brand of justice remains insatiable. The question remains: is this typecasting by Hollywood, or has Neeson simply found his groove? Perhaps it’s a combination of both – the steady paycheque are undoubtedly attractive, and there’s something to be said for mastering a formula that works.
What’s Next for the Irish Bruiser?
Amidst his reign of action films, Neeson still dipped his toes in the waters of comedy here and there in minor roles. In 2011, he starred in an episode of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant‘s Life’s Too Short, appearing as himself in one of the show’s standout scenes. Then in 2014, he featured in Seth MacFarlane’s western comedy, A Million Ways to Die in the West. In 2025, he will re-team with MacFarlane for The Naked Gun. A reboot of the wacky 90s comedy franchise, Neeson won’t stray too far from action, just this time around it will be of the slapstick kind. He is also set to star in the action comedy, Cold Storage, and will reprise his role as gangster Jimmy Conlon in Run All Night 2. So, it’s clear that he is not hanging up his gloves just yet.
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