\n
\t\t\tE \n\tThe Naked Gun<\/a>, which opened this past weekend, is one of the funniest big-studio comedies to hit theaters in years. And so many of its breathless, breakneck gags succeed because of the tension between our expectations of Neeson \u2014 which he leans into onscreen \u2014 and the goofy havoc he wreaks as Frank Drebin Jr. It\u2019s perfect casting, an implicit nod to the fact that the man who played the elder Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun films<\/a> and their TV predecessor, Police Squad!, was another actor better known for his dramatic turns, Leslie Nielsen.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking with Rolling Stone, Neeson discusses his dead-serious approach to comedy, the lessons he learned as an amateur boxer, the importance of punctuality, and much more.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat is the best advice you\u2019ve ever gotten? \n\tWhat do you wish someone had told you about acting when you were just getting started? \n\tWhat\u2019s the worst part of success? \n\tDo you have any acting heroes? \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tHow have you tried to embody that in your work? \n\tWhat are some of your favorite books?\u00a0 \n\tWhat music still moves you the most? \n\tYou haven\u2019t done a lot of comedy. What intrigued you about starring in a Naked Gun reboot? \n\tYou were hilarious as yourself in Ricky Gervais\u2019 series Life\u2019s Too Short. The conceit was that you wanted to get into comedy and were terrible at it. What do you remember about filming that? \n\tWhat comedies are you a fan of? \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tYou grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I\u2019m curious if comedy played an important role in your life during what was otherwise a very violent time? \n\tI read that you had a try out for the Irish soccer team Bohemian F.C. \n\tIs there anything from your experiences as a boxer that you\u2019ve carried with you? \n\tLike yourself, original Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen came from a more dramatic background. How did your dramatic sensibilities inform your comedic ones?\u00a0 \n\tHave you seen the videos of him doing interviews with the fart machine? \n\tEven those he manages to play pretty straight.\u00a0 \n\tComedy is all about timing, but so is action and fight choreography. Do you see any kind of connections between the two? \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tIn Taken, you famously say, \u201cWhat I do have are a very particular set of skills.\u201d What particular skills have you acquired over your career?\u00a0 \n\tPunctuality is key.
\n\t\tven over the phone, you can feel Liam Neeson<\/a>\u2019s gravitas. It doesn\u2019t matter that he\u2019s hopped on the line for a \u201cLast Word\u201d interview loosely centered around his remarkable comedic turn in The Naked Gun<\/a> reboot. This is still a man who\u2019s played both Jedi master<\/a> and Batman supervillain<\/a>; starred in Steven Spielberg\u2019s Schindler\u2019s List<\/a> and reinvented himself as a late-career action star in Taken<\/a>. So when Neeson responds to a simple, \u201cHow are you?\u201d with a deadpan, \u201cWorse,\u201d it takes a moment to register that the celebrated actor is actually gunning for giggles.<\/p>\n
Stay poised, an old professional actor told me once, right.<\/p>\n
That the highs would\u2019ve been great, and the lows would have been very low.<\/p>\n
Someone once said, \u201cIt\u2019s terrible when people are talking about you, and it\u2019s even worse when they\u2019re not talking about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll go back to the old days, Forties, Fifties. I did very much like Spencer Tracy as a performer, because he was always so real. Without putting on false noses and strange accents and all this sort of shit \u2014 he was just always present and real.<\/p>\n
If the audience believes the words coming out of your mouth, that\u2019s good enough for me.<\/p>\n
I love crime novels. Nordic noir. There\u2019s one guy who passed away a few years ago, Henning Mankell. Terrific Nordic writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, U2. I like Pink Floyd\u2019s The Wall very much. I did see it in concert in 1983, maybe in London. It was terrific.<\/p>\n
I was approached by Seth MacFarlane to gauge my interest in this. And I did see the original productions, which I enjoyed \u2014 they were a good giggle. So, I said I was interested, and we left it at that. Then I got the script, and I thought it was funny, certainly a bunch of giggles.<\/p>\n
People thought it was improvised, but it was far from it. Every comma, semicolon was written by Ricky. You know, I was a bit nervous about doing it because I thought I\u2019d be laughing all the time. But Ricky was the one that was laughing all the time. It gave me confidence.<\/p>\n
As a kid, I\u2019d go to a lot of Saturday matinees, and I adored Laurel and Hardy, those late-1920s, 1930s, little 20-minute comedies they shot. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Then more modern day, Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller\u2019s film, always makes me laugh. Will Ferrell movies. Mike Myers, Austin Powers. And Napoleon Dynamite I thought was terrific.<\/p>\n
Certainly cinema was a big release, comedy or not. It was a turbulent time. And escape was very, very important. School sports \u2014 I was an amateur boxer as a kid.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know where that story came from \u2014 it\u2019s totally not true! I have two left feet when it comes to soccer.<\/p>\n
Preparation, and keeping fairly physically fit for life, and certainly for playing leads in movies. Because the work\u2019s exacting, there are long days. It behooves you to be reasonably fit.<\/p>\n
In the movie, I try and play every scene as serious as I can. Maybe a little heightened for certain things. I don\u2019t play for comedy \u2014 that\u2019s one rule I set for myself. Don\u2019t play the comedy. That hopefully will come across with your fellow actors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I did. I saw a couple.<\/p>\n
Yeah, he keeps it straight, but it\u2019s sweet, innocent schoolboy humor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I suppose there is. That\u2019s an interesting question. You rely on your director and your editor, of course, certainly with fight sequences. In The Naked Gun, I was surrounded by terrific actors and actresses, especially Pamela Anderson<\/a>. She\u2019s outstanding in the film \u2014 she\u2019s sexy, funny, and just great to work with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Certainly with acting, you\u2019re always questing. You know what I mean? I never feel I\u2019ve done it. There\u2019s always stuff to learn, with different actors and actresses you\u2019re working with, as well as different directors. As I said earlier, I just try to be real. And show up on time. That\u2019s very important. I hear disturbing stories about actors and actresses who are very gifted, but show up on the set two, three, four hours late. I would never work with those people. I think it\u2019s so insulting.<\/p>\n
Yes, very, very important, I think. Because you have a crew of like 60, 70, 80 people waiting for you. The very least you can do is give them the respect by turning up on time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"E ven over the phone, you can feel Liam Neeson\u2019s gravitas. It doesn\u2019t matter that he\u2019s hopped on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,27680,344,27681,27682],"class_list":["post-43142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-liam-neeson","tag-movies","tag-pamela-anderson","tag-the-naked-gun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}