Liam Neeson

William John "Liam" Neeson, OBE, is a Northern Ireland-born Irish actor, known for his distinctive deep, gravelly voice. He is best known for his many film and television roles, but his most notable role is Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's 1993 epic historical drama film Schindler's List (in which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor). He also lent his voice to characters in several animated films, such as Phango, the main antagonist of the 2013 computer-animated film Khumba, Bad Cop/Good Cop in The LEGO Movie, and Norvirus Raccoon, one of the main antagonists of The Nut Job.

For Disney, he voiced Aslan the lion in the first two Chronicles of Narnia films under the Disney banner (along with a later film outside of Disney), as well as Fujimoto in the English dub of Studio Ghibli's Ponyo. He also portrayed or voiced Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi; a role he originated from The Phantom Menace. He reprised his role as Qui-Gon Jinn in Tales of the Jedi. Additionally, he played Leo Cutter in the 1988 Touchstone Pictures film The Good Mother, Ben Ryan in the 1996 Hollywood Pictures film Before and After, Charles Mayeaux in Gun Shy, and "Priest" Vallon in the 2002 Miramax film Gangs of New York.

Neeson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, the son of primary school caretaker Bernard "Barney" Neeson and cook Katherine "Kitty" Neeson (née Brown). His mother was born and raised in Waterford in the southeast of Ireland. Brought up Catholic, he was named Liam after a local priest. He has three sisters: Elizabeth, Bernadette, and Rosaleen. He attended St. Patrick's College, Ballymena, from 1963 to 1967, and later recalled that his love of drama began there.

He said that growing up as a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant town made him cautious, and once said he felt like a "second-class citizen" there, but has also said he was never made to feel "inferior or even different" at the town's predominantly Protestant technical college. "It would be colourful to imagine I had a rebellious, uproarious Irish background," he has said, "but the facts were much greyer. Irish, yes. But all that nationalistic stuff, crying into your Guinness and singing rebel songs — that was never my scene." He has described himself as "out of touch" with the politics and history of Northern Ireland until becoming aware of protests by fellow students after Bloody Sunday, a massacre in Derry in 1972 during the Troubles, which encouraged him to learn more local history. In a 2009 interview, he said, "I never stop thinking about [the Troubles]. I've known guys and girls who have been perpetrators of violence and victims. Protestants and Catholics. It's part of my DNA."