Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson is an actor from Northern Ireland, born William John Neeson in Ballymena, County Antrim, on 7 June 1952. He began on stage with the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast in 1976 and made his film debut in 1978 in Pilgrim's Progress. His breakthrough came with Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993), in which he played Oskar Schindler and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He went on to lead films such as Rob Roy and Michael Collins, the latter bringing him the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, and took major supporting parts as Qui-Gon Jinn in the first Star Wars prequel and Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins. From 2008 he became an established action star through the Taken series and thrillers made with the director Jaume Collet-Serra. He also worked on Broadway, with two Tony Award nominations for Best Actor in a Play. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, and films he has appeared in have grossed over eleven billion US dollars worldwide.