Tag: Natasha Richardson

It’s not as if we were short of reasons to admire Liam Neeson in the first place. The man is a remarkable actor, by all accounts an intelligent, decent human being, and even in the face of his wife’s untimely passing, has always managed to keep his private life laudably, well, private.

But even by his own stand-up guy standards, Neeson went above and beyond the call by returning to the set of Atom Egoyan’s new thriller “Chloe” to complete his scenes, a mere week after Natasha Richardson’s death. A deeply impressed Egoyan says:

“He was very committed to the film and finishing his role, and he didn’t need to come back that soon … But he really thought it would be best for the film, and it was just such an unspeakably generous thing for him to do. And he’s an extraordinary, extraordinary person.”

As for the film itself, I must say I’m intrigued. Egoyan, Neeson (who co-stars with Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried) and ultra-left-field scripter Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) occupy very different artistic spheres in my mind — given the auteur’s patchy form of late, the combination could get messy. Still, together with Sundance winner “Five Minutes of Heaven” (in which he does sterling work), it indicates a move into the kind of gutsy arthouse territory Neeson hasn’t entered much in recent years.

In any case, Neeson’s recent mini-comeback has been one of the more pleasantly surprising developments of the past year. “Taken,” for all its sleeper success, was a rote effort, while you may recall I was none too impressed with “The Other Man” — but it’s encouraging to see a 56 year-old thesp (and one who has always seemed more comfortable as an actor than a star) getting major leading-man roles. Meanwhile, “Lincoln” and “Clash of the Titans” await him. Score one for the good guys.