Hollywood superstar Liam Neeson reveals his complex relationship with Christian belief and explains why he will never stop searching for answers.
Liam Neeson’s career is one of the most diverse you’ll find. Never a man to rest on his laurels, he’s kicking off 2017 with two typically intense performances, in dramatic adventure A Monster Calls and belief battle Silence. They prove we’ve by no means seen everything the actor has to offer. For Neeson himself, it’s a journey as much as a job. While both productions are wildly different — the former is a heart-wrenching fantasy in which a young boy conjures up a monster to help him cope with his mother’s terminal illness; the latter is director Martin Scorsese’s historical epic focused on the brutal persecution of Jesuit priests in Japan in the 1600s — they prompted Neeson to ask questions about life, death and faith.
“You do think about your mortality a lot more as you get older, not to get heavy about it but you do a lot more because you’re a dad,” says the 64-year-old sagely about himself. “I want to be around for them and that’s a concern. Those thoughts start creeping into your head.” His sons — Michael, 21, and Daniel, 20 — know too well the frailty of life following the death of their mother, Natasha Richardson, seven years ago, after she suffered a head injury while skiing in Quebec, Canada. For Neeson, the death of his wife galvanised him to work harder. He was keen not to be seen “wallowing in sadness or depression” by his sons, and he describes feeling drawn to A Monster Calls precisely because it is about “learning to navigate life and facing the fragility of life and death”.
“Children can be shielded too much from the serious issues when they are a lot more capable than we give credit,” says Neeson. “They desire the truth but they’re dismissed, always hearing, ‘You wouldn’t understand!’ Of course they understand. They may not process it the same way, but they get it.”
In Silence, the Northern Irish star and devout Catholic takes on another familiar topic — faith — in his role as Father Ferreira, a Portugese Jesuit priest who commits apostasy (the abandonment of belief) under torture. Starring with Neeson are Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, as fellow Jesuit missionaries who journey to find their mentor Ferreira in 17th Century Japan — a time when Christianity was banned there.
Scorsese’s passion project
Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō, Silence is a passion project for veteran director Scorsese – he’s been wanting to make the film for more than 25 years. Given he’s waited such a long time, it might not surprise you to learn Scorsese is a very understanding, considerate man — and boss. “He understands actors; he’s an actor’s director,” explains Neeson. “He makes the space where you exist safe and comfortable because he understands that is necessary to deliver your best; that’s what he requires. He gives you all the tools but ultimately, it’s up to us to construct the creation. That’s appreciated but also incredibly daunting because he’s laid it out for you, and all you want to do is get it right for him.”
Running at two-and-a-half hours, Silence is visually stunning, thematically challenging and often brutal, as it depicts Japanese officials seeking to combat Christianity among peasants. Those officials tortured the missionaries who preached the gospel, until they relinquished their faith.
Neeson’s own relationship with faith is complex. Brought up Catholic in Ballymena, County Antrim – a predominantly Protestant town – he confesses that he has “always doubted” his faith. “At various times in my life,” he admits. “But I don’t believe you can have deep faith without serious misgivings and I think my misgivings, my doubt, will stay with me until the day I die. But I’m proud of always asking questions, and know full well I’ll never learn the answers. That won’t stop me asking.”
In the 1986 British drama The Mission, Neeson played a Spanish Jesuit missionary. During filming, the then 33-year-old Neeson met Father Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit poet, priest and activist who served as an adviser. The two shared many spiritual discussions, but Neeson says “nothing was resolved”. “The same happened after working on this with Martin,” he says.
“I read [Richard] Dawkins’ The God Delusion, many books like that. Science journals, learning about the workings of the human brain and what it can do, how the brain can rewire itselfs… the brain can trick itself into believing what another large group are believing. That’s one scientific explanation behind [religious beliefs]. And then I look to my mother, a beautiful woman with a beautiful heart and soul, chastising herself because at 96-years-old she’s not able to walk to Mass. And that precise faith inspires me, it always has.”
Silence is in cinemas from February 16.
3 thoughts on “Testing the faith of Liam Neeson”
I am watched ‘Christiana’, the film, featuring Christiana and children, and friend, Mercy. It’s Part 2 of Pilgrim’s Progress with Liam Neeson in it. What a wonderful movie I found it to be. You certainly do “learn as you go along”, which is what Liam Neeson’s character says. ( I’m still learning after a life time) and “how narrow is the gate that leads to everlasting life and how broad is the road that leads to destruction.” But HOPE never fails, as God is intimately Personal, and ever Present in our lives when we turn to Christ, Jesus.
This film is very good with Liam in it.
Thank you. He is humble. But his faith pierces through. Liam has a depth you don’t get without knowing God.
I discovered something a few years ago that truly surprised me, and what I never would have thought very likely at all, and though the possibility exists, I still believe is very unlikely and rare; because I know the power of biased prejudice, indoctrination, and long held Spiritual beliefs or lack of, or for that matter anything, that someone has believed or not believed for a very very long time, but what will not withstand the test of scrutinization. And whenever someone is handicapped by this sort of thing, it is very difficult for them to change their mind, and regardless of how much and how profound the challenging evidence; and whatever the topic, but especially whenever it involve a person’s ideological, or Spiritual perspectives of reality. But when it does, whatever objective reasoning skills that person may have, and ordinarily utilizes when confronted with questions that require unbiased research, and open minded evaluation, they’re usual exemplary objective reasoning skills, will get thrown completely out the window.
And I think the only antidote, or rather a particular character trait, that has the power to override this handicap, is when someone is deeply concerned and interested in trying to discover what is the truth, and not just they’re preferred truth, and even if they realize the possibility and risk involved, when researching the evidence, for trying to discover what’s really true, it might not be what they preferred, and might even hurt.
And this is something that I wish Liam Neeson would have done, and maybe he has by now, or anyone who is struggling with they’re faith, and not satisfied with mere faith, and needing to know that what they believe is trustworthy, and will withstand the test of scrutinization. Because what I discovered, that truly surprised me, was the names and stories of some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, who had won awards for their assorted, scientific, technological, and academic achievements.
But they also had something else in common, other than their brilliance, and awards for their achievements, they had also all been lifelong devout Atheists, but Atheists, who possessed intellectual integrity, and which exposed my own biased prejudice, because I believed all Atheists were lacking in that particular quality of character, because I reasoned, that if they weren’t lacking in it, they wouldn’t have been Atheists. But these were Atheists who had either been challenged by one of their peers, one of they’re students or a family member, to disprove the Christian belief in the Deity of Jesus Christ, and His Resurrection from the dead. And all being lifelong devout Atheists, as well as men with extraordinary intellectual abilities, and in various ways of expression, they all were confident that it would be difficult to imagine too many things that would be easier to disprove. And the amount of research these men put in to prove what they had believed their entire lives, as well as what they believed was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on Mankind, and that had caused more deaths, bloodshed, and human conflict, than any other reason in recorded history. But the evidence they discovered was so overwhelming, that they all came away, devout believers and worshippers of Jesus Christ. And to quote Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project, when asked during an interview, what it was that caused him to change his mind, he said, “ I found myself backed into a corner, and realized that I had to make a decision, I had to either abandon my atheism or my integrity, but I couldn’t keep them both. And there’s more than a few compelling books on the subject, that would challenge and put to task, the most convinced and hardened Atheist; and one of them is by a former lifelong Atheist and highly renowned, Criminal Homicide Detective and CSI Professor, who had been challenged by one of his Christian students, to apply the same methodology techniques that he teaches and employs on all of his unsolved homicide cases; but this time he was challenged to employ all of his skills, on the evidence to support our disprove the claimed Deity of Jesus Christ and His bodily Resurrection from death. And the title of the book is called, Cold Case Christianity, by Jay Warner Wallace.