It’s fascinating to imagine what the career of Liam Neeson would be like today were it not for Taken. That’s not to say he’d have faded into obscurity given that he already had decades of experience and acclaim under his belt, but the actor would have almost certainly embarked on an entirely different trajectory.
The Academy Award-nominated Schindler’s List star only signed on for the role of Bryan Mills when Jeff Bridges dropped out after being cast in the part, with his confidence in the project so low that he fully expected the European-set action thriller to be sent straight to video.
Instead, it launched an entire second career for a performer who was best known for their steely gravitas and penchant for playing kindly father figures and mentors up until that point.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and Neeson has become firmly established as the grizzled elder statesman of the genre, one who can be found sporting a leather jacket and punching interchangeable goons in the throat at least once a year, if not more. His first major action-heavy project post-Taken was Joe Carnahan’s blockbuster big screen remake of The A-Team, which partnered him up with a co-star who left him unexpectedly frightened.
The reinvention of the small screen classic also served as the first action extravaganza of Bradley Cooper’s fast-rising career, with the actor admitting to The Fan Carpet that “it’s always been a dream” of his. Not only that, but he described the opportunity to make his maiden voyage into the gun-toting arena “besides the likes of Liam Neeson” as “just amazing”.
The feelings were certainly reciprocated on Neeson’s part, with the leading man praising the “wonderful camaraderie between the guys”. That being said, Cooper going off-script and embarking on an improvisational tirade in one scene caught him off-guard to the extent he felt unprepared for the loose nature of the production.
As Neeson explained per Digital Spy: “We did a scene in the van, which was my first time with Bradley,” he said. “He starts this improvisation, prompted by the director, and I’m there going, ‘What the hell is this?’” Although he found it “terrifying for the first few days” trying to wrap his head around the repeated deviations from the screenplay, eventually “it got to be inspiring”.
Audiences were nowhere near as inspired as Neeson was by the movie, though, considering The A-Team resolutely failed to set the world alight after flopping at the box office, which in turn put paid to any notions the cast and crew had regarding the sequels that had been tentatively planned by studio Universal.
Despite his reputation as an ass-kicker extraordinaire, then, all it takes to terrify Neeson is going off-script in the middle of a scene.
