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Sunday, May 09, 1999
Liam Neeson's
retirement from the movies may be short-lived if his wife has anything to say about it."I don't take it too seriously," Natasha Richardson told us, with a roll of her eyes, at the 65th annual Drama League Awards on Friday.
Just two days before, Neeson told us that even though he's about to rule theaters in the latest "Star Wars" installment, he was quitting Hollywood because "I don't fit in anymore."
But Richardson suggested that it won't be long before he's back in front of the cameras. Her uncle, Corin Redgrave, agreed that Neeson was probably having "a mood."
"One can understand those moods," said Redgrave. "I could imagine that [George Lucas' "The Phantom Menace"] is sort of enough for a lifetime. It's grueling, hard work. I think he's too much of an all-around actor . . . to ever want to be away for that long. A year or six months of fly-fishing will do him a world of good."
Anthony Hopkins said last year that he was washing his hands of Hollywood — only to sign on for "Mission Impossible II." But Neeson insisted he's dead serious.
"It's not a decision I made overnight," he explained at a party Premiere magazine threw at Il Cantinori. "I've been thinking about it for the last 10 years."
Couldn't he make artier pictures for a smaller, independent film company? "What?" he scoffed. "Miramax? That's Disney. All these guys want to be studio heads . . . maxi-moguls."
Neeson, who believes corporations tend to stunt creativity, even seems disappointed in the toys his "Phantom Menace" movie has spawned. He's seen a couple of the Jedi playthings cast in his image and likeness.
"You can tell they were made in China," he said. "The Chinese always make the eyes of people from the West too big and round."
One shudders to think what an anatomically correct Liam Neeson doll would look like. Director Michael Caton-Jones once told us of the day he shot that scene in "Rob Roy" where Neeson bathed in an icy Scottish lake before making love to Jessica Lange. After Caton-Jones yelled "Cut!" one of the local crew declared, "That's a fine bit of rope on that laddy . . . and not a bit of shrinkage!"
