{"id":375867,"date":"2026-04-12T12:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375867\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T12:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:16:14","slug":"liam-neeson-wanted-a-go-at-being-a-film-star-i-didnt-have-that-in-my-dna-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375867\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Liam Neeson wanted a go at being a film star. I didn\u2019t have that in my DNA\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I meet Ciar\u00e1n Hinds<\/a>, the most hearty and unaffected of actors, he is taking a day\u2019s rest from filming in Co Wicklow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m working on Walk the Blue Fields,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Claire Keegan<\/a> adaptation by Conor McPherson, with John Crowley directing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah, yes. After An Cail\u00edn Ci\u00fain<\/a> and Small Things Like These<\/a>, another Keegan story gets the big-screen treatment. The cast is stacked. Who else is in the Netflix<\/a> production?<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody called Emily Blunt?\u201d he says in mock confusion. \u201cA guy called Andrew Scott?\u201d<\/p>\n

He chortles to himself, as if flattered to be in such exalted company. In truth Hinds is rarely far from an \u201call-star cast\u201d these days. A busy actor since leaving Belfast for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, in the early 1970s, he has, in his golden years, happened upon a truly exhausting run of fecundity. <\/p>\n

Only a few weeks ago he was, opposite Lesley Manville, in our cinemas with Midwinter Break<\/a>. Just before that he starred as Will Arnett\u2019s dad in Is This Thing On?<\/a> You can see him in Netflix\u2019s version of John Steinbeck\u2019s East of Eden later in the year. He has just finished shooting Tom Ford\u2019s Cry to Heaven, a period epic with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Colin Firth. I could go on.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last year or two I decided to slow down and just more or less choose \u2013 if I had the choice, which I don\u2019t often \u2013 to get involved with things if I found them interesting. And certainly I found a few things that were very interesting to me. And they just seem to have arrived at the one time.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ciar\u00e1n Hinds: \u2018A lot of my friends have the same talent as me, but never got the breaks\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Here is a question. In 2022 Hinds received an Oscar<\/a> nomination in the best-supporting-actor category for Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Belfast<\/a>. Has that been a contributing factor to the run of high-profile jobs? Maybe that is a question for his agent.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Three Urns, in cinemas this April, has Ciar\u00e1n Hinds playing an Irishman travelling, with the ashes of his late wife, from France to his old home in Ireland <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right, Donald. My agent and I work very intimately,\u201d he says. \u201cHe knows what my taste is. Sometimes he says, \u2018This is a paid job. This is probably something that you\u2019d like to do.\u2019 And we work on a very direct and personal basis. <\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of things came after the Oscar nomination \u2013 to turn up in action films playing the old crabby guy. Ha ha! No, I don\u2019t need that. There are proper adventures to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those action flicks come with perks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they might do. But I\u2019m at a certain age where I\u2019m not chasing perks.\u201d<\/p>\n

You will be more likely to see Hinds in something like this month\u2019s The Three Urns. Directed by John-Paul Davidson and Stephen Warbeck, the lively, folksy comedy has Hinds playing an Irishman travelling, with the ashes of his late wife, from France to his old home in Ireland. <\/p>\n

I would guess that part of the attraction was meeting up with old chums. The cast features such domestic legends as Lorcan Cranitch<\/a>, Lalor Roddy, Sin\u00e9ad Cusack<\/a>, Jim Norton<\/a> and Lisa Dwan<\/a>. Quite a gang.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Can I make some suggestions, if I\u2019m going to be at the heart of it, about people I\u2019d love to work with \u2013 to come up for a day, or a day and a half, and do two scenes?\u2019 And they said, \u2018Yeah\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good for me to be able to ask Jim Norton or Sin\u00e9ad \u2013 people that I\u2019d worked with \u2013 and say \u2018Would you make your way up and get a decent bed for the night and decent dinner? Then we can go to work.\u2019 It was really lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story he has just told suggests he likes film sets to be social occasions. He looks to have the same attitude towards the promotional gauntlet. Stories amble into one another. Anecdotes wind their way around opinions. There is never a sense of him feeling under obligation to toe a line or act as salesman. Hinds just seems to enjoy being himself.<\/p>\n

He was born, 73 years ago, in north Belfast to a doctor dad and a mum who did a bit of acting. Talking to him over the years, I have got the sense that he finds little to complain about in his childhood. These were the years before the Troubles kicked off, a period that is now rarely mulled over. Did it come as a shock when the violence began?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did come as a shock,\u201d he says. \u201cI went to St Malachy\u2019s<\/a>, a Catholic grammar school, and we weren\u2019t taught \u2018our history\u2019 and \u2018their history\u2019. We were taught just history: European history, British history, Irish history. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents were middle-class liberal Catholic, I guess. But they were open, and they mixed it up. Because my mom did a bit of drama herself. So they were mixing with people. They weren\u2019t segregated. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my father, being a doctor, his practice was on the Springfield Road. So his patients all came from the Shankill and the Falls. We were brought up with no awareness of the huge tribal divide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JamieJamie Dornan, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Jude Hill and Judi Dench in Belfast. Photograph: Rob Youngson\/Focus Features <\/p>\n

A lot more history has passed between then and now. Belfast is buzzing in a way that he (and I, for that matter) could barely imagine during the 1970s and 1980s. Is he still connected to the old manor? Does he have a sense of those social changes? He still has family there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m aware of it,\u201d Hinds says. \u201cI think about this younger generational thing, about getting rid of all the orange and green history and saying \u2018Can we please, for the generations to come, move the f**k on?\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, and that\u2019s great. That\u2019s how it should be. But there are still chippy people up there at it again. That\u2019s why the whole integrated-education thing is so important. We can all work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is certainly a large part of the younger generation who don\u2019t care about the old divisions. It\u2019s a demographic you don\u2019t hear enough about.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is getting on for 30 years,\u201d Hinds says, looking back to the Belfast Agreement<\/a>. \u201cYou need to move forward \u2013 for the future of people you purport to love and care for. If you can afford to, can you not just get out more and be more open-hearted? The Fleadh Cheoil<\/a> is going to Belfast for the first time this year. I think that should be a great event for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The young Hinds briefly studied law at Queen\u2019s University Belfast before lunging towards the acting lark. I can see him as a barrister. He has the bearing. He has the voice. Does he ever consider an alternate path where he practised that profession?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I had it in me to be the lawyer type,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an intellectual pursuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had enough raw talent to make it into Rada in London. That was an exciting place to be in the aftermath of the 1960s. But there is pressure too. I imagine competition between the hungriest young actors of the era.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were 21 students. And they did seven terms,\u201d Hinds says. \u201cKevin McNally was there. He was the brilliant one of our generation. He gave a remarkable Falstaff at the age of 19. Wow! You knew he was very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNally, still with us and still busy, became an unavoidable character actor. But others fell away. The breaks weren\u2019t there. They maybe realised they didn\u2019t have what it took.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what it was in our time, but most of them gave up when nothing was happening and retired. But before us there were wonderful actors. Alan Rickman<\/a> was there. After us, then it all started. You had Kenneth Branagh<\/a> and Fiona Shaw<\/a> and so on. I was gone by the mid-1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Liam Neeson: From Paisley-loving Catholic boy to actor, then action man, now comedy starOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It is an oddly shaped career. You could reasonably argue that, for a decade or so, Hinds was an \u201cactor\u2019s actor\u201d. That is to say he worked consistently but wasn\u2019t hugely well known outside the profession. Like Liam Neeson<\/a> and Gabriel Byrne<\/a>, he got an early break in Excalibur, but that did not immediately lead to movie stardom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was doing theatre in Dublin,\u201d he says. \u201cJim Sheridan<\/a> was running the Project Arts Centre there. Jim took me into the company, where I met the wonderful actors Peter Caffrey and Johnny Murphy. John Boorman<\/a> was looking around for young actors to be in Excalibur. But then I went back to the theatre. I really didn\u2019t do much television work until the 1990s, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LiamLiam Neeson and Ciar\u00e1n Hinds at the premiere of There Will Be Blood in 2007 in New York City. Photograph: Stephen Lovekin\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Did he ever look at how, say, Neeson surged after Excalibur and wish he too could be swanning about Hollywood?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no. Liam is a great friend, and I always knew Liam had it in him,\u201d he says, amiably. \u201cHe wanted to have a go at being a film star. I didn\u2019t have that in my DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the mid-1980s he toured the world in Peter Brook<\/a>\u2019s legendary production of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. It was there that he met his wife, the actor H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Patarot (who plays his character\u2019s lover, Mina, in the RT\u00c9 dramedy The Dry), and they have remained together ever since.<\/p>\n

Does having another actor in the house help? Do they bounce ideas off one another?<\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes help H\u00e9l\u00e8ne if she wants help with dialogue,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just turned out that I worked more than H\u00e9l\u00e8ne.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hinds laughs his self-deprecatory laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s strange. The opportunities she has, she goes more for quality than quantity. I\u2019m a bit more about quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CiaránCiar\u00e1n Hinds and his wife H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Patarot attending the 94th Annual Academy Awards in 2022.Photograph: Mike Coppola\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s true. There were endless highlights throughout the 1990s. He was in the first production of Patrick Marber<\/a>\u2019s controversial Closer, at the National Theatre in London. He played Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company for Sam Mendes<\/a>. It is often overlooked that he was hugely touching as Captain Wentworth in Roger Michell\u2019s 1995 film of Persuasion \u2013 a first shot in the late-1990s Jane Austen<\/a> revival \u2013 for the BBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a beautiful thing to be involved with,\u201d he says. \u201cYou realise, as you get older, it\u2019s a tricky thing to take great pieces of literature and transfer them into another medium and give it the grace and the depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the decades progressed Hinds became an increasingly unavoidable face on film and television. He is in Game of Thrones, There Will Be Blood, Munich and (of course) a Harry Potter film. <\/p>\n

I get no sense that the greater visibility has much changed him. His daughter, Aoife Hinds, is now a busy actor. He and Patarot share their life between Paris and London. I can understand that. Hinds is a man of international tastes, but the Belfast in him remains strong. How is his French?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I did it up to A-level,\u201d he says. \u201cSuddenly these words unlock themselves \u2013 with the aid of some red wine. Ha ha! The neighbours are always very kind to me. I have enough to get by and converse.\u201d<\/p>\n

That matters. He always has a great deal to say.<\/p>\n

The Three Urns is in cinemas from Friday, April 17th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I meet Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, the most hearty and unaffected of actors, he is taking a day\u2019s rest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[150608,196079,430,196074,156,47195,196080,2522,196077,196081,129685,98518,24700,196078,196075,111,139,69,2584,196083,196082,468,196076],"class_list":{"0":"post-375867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-alan-rickman","9":"tag-belfast-agreement","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-ciaran-hinds","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-fiona-shaw","14":"tag-gabriel-byrne","15":"tag-jane-austen","16":"tag-jim-norton","17":"tag-jim-sheridan","18":"tag-john-boorman","19":"tag-kenneth-branagh","20":"tag-liam-neeson","21":"tag-lisa-dwan","22":"tag-lorcan-cranitch","23":"tag-new-zealand","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-oscars","27":"tag-patrick-marber","28":"tag-peter-brook","29":"tag-sam-mendes","30":"tag-sinead-cusack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}