[caption id="attachment_70689" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Liam Neeson in “Wrath of the Titans.”"]
Northern Irish actor Liam Neeson said he was thrilled to work again with his longtime friend Ralph Fiennes on “Wrath of the Titans,” a sequel to their 2010 blockbuster, “Clash of the Titans.”
The award-winning film stars previously collaborated on the 1993 Best Picture Oscar winner “Schindler’s List.” Fiennes also starred with Neeson’s beloved late wife, Natasha Richardson, in “Maid in Manhattan” and “The White Countess.”
In their latest endeavor, Neeson and Fiennes reprise their roles of warring fraternal deities Zeus and Hades, who ultimately join forces to save humanity from their vengeful, powerful father Kronos, the leader of the titans imprisoned in the Underworld. Sam Worthington plays demi-god Perseus, Zeus’s son, while Danny Huston plays Zeus and Hades’s brother, Poseidon.
Asked at a recent New York press conference what it was like to work again with his old friend Fiennes, Neeson teased the Irish Echo: “Friend? Who said we were friends?
“No, he is,” Neeson assured. “He is one of my dearest, oldest friends. It was terrific. When we did the first one, ‘Clash of the Titans,’ we found it hard to act with each other. I would look at his forehead and he would look at my forehead and sometimes it looked quite silly, but we were more restrained this time and we had a lot more deeper, darker issues to resolve, so we didn’t laugh as much.”
The 59-year-old Ballymena, Co. Antrim, native confessed one major scene he has with Fiennes in “Wrath” was awkward at first since the special-effects explosions, fires and monsters seen in the finished product weren’t added until later in the filmmaking process.
“We both felt like pillocks to start. You go out and there is a real set in Wales and there are hundreds of extras and you’re going like this,” Neeson grimaced, putting up his hands as if letting loose the power of a Greek god. “And I’m looking at him to see what he’s doing. … You have to go for it, absolutely.”
“They paid me millions,” he quipped.
The former Queen's University Belfast student and veteran of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre is no stranger to movie magic and green-screen acting. Among his film credits are the space fantasy “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace” and comic-book adaptation “Batman Begins.” He also lent his distinctive voice to the computer-generated lion Aslan in the live-action “The Chronicles of Narnia” movies, based on the books by C.S. Lewis.
“I’m from the old school, ‘Star Wars Episode 1,’ which was colored tennis balls,” Neeson said of the objects sometimes used on film sets to represent characters or scenery that aren’t really there. “And I kind of liked my colored tennis balls. I got used to them. We had lots of little bits of colored tape, as well, and you had to act sometimes to bits of tape. That’s OK.”
Neeson told reporters at the press conference there were a few things he wanted to see in a sequel to “Clash of the Titans” before he signed up to star in the sequel.
“I just wanted more interaction with my son and my brothers, essentially, which I think this script certainly provided. The dynamics of how Hades and Zeus became separated, the jealousies that drove them apart. … And the father-son relationship, which we can all relate to,” Neeson noted. “My favorite scenes were with Sam, at the beginning when Zeus appears to him and asks for his help, and my scenes with Ralph.”
Grilled about what of his many projects is his favorite and which characters he might have borrowed from in creating his portrayal of Zeus, Neeson replied: “They’re all special, to be honest. You use whatever you have as an actor for any part. I can’t stop being me, so I guess I did [look to some of my past characters for this role.] I had a great head of hair; that helped a lot, actually, in a strange sort of way.”
Despite the movie’s non-stop action and spectacle, Neeson said he never lost sight of the fact “Wrath” was basically a family drama. The actor credits director Jonathan Liebesman with humanizing the mythical characters.
“He always brought it down to story,” Neeson said. “We knew there were going to be 257 explosions in this particular instance, but he always brought it down to where we were with our characters and what our journey was at that moment.”
So, what is it about these heroic tales that stand the test of time?
“They are thousands of years old and they tap into every culture in the world and they are essentially the same story, which is an innocent has to go through a trial of ordeal to save society and comes out the other end having learned something that advances his society,” Neeson offered.
Speaking of longevity, the star of “The Grey,” “Taken,” “Love Actually,” “Gangs of New York,” “Michael Collins,” “Rob Roy” and “Excalibur” was asked to divulge the secret to his own success in film.
“You need a huge amount of lady luck,” he said. “I believe you create your own luck, but luck is a big factor. I’ve got actor friends in London… one of my dearest friends hasn’t worked for five years and he is a fantastic actor on stage and on screen. Five years, nada. I’m just lucky.”
Well-regarded by his peers and always-in-demand by the movie studios, Neeson also manages to find time in his hectic schedule for smaller, more personal projects such as the Irish films “Breakfast on Pluto” and “Five Minutes of Heaven.”
“You just do,” he told the Echo about balancing a workload that includes blockbusters and independent films. “I try and mix it up. It’s as simple as that. With being a single parent [of two teen sons,] sometimes it’s a juggle, but it’s great to be offered the work. It’s a juggle and it’s good juggling.”
“Wrath of the Titans” is in theaters now.
