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Liam Neeson is easily one of the great action stars to ever grace the silver screen, and one need only look at his filmography to understand why. Taken, The Commuter and Non-Stop are only a few of the films that perfectly showcase his skills. So with this, you’d think Neeson would be relatively fearless when it comes to performing stunts. Well, as it so happens, there’s one stunt from Batman Begins that even he has to admit was a bit “frightening” to pull off. Honestly, I’m even shaking just hearing about it.
Because Liam Neeson does action movies so frequently, it would be easy to assume that he has no problem performing stunts. But during his recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he revealed to the host that the only stunt to ever make him truly uncomfortable is one he had to perform with Christian Bale in Batman Begins. The scene in question is the one that sees Neeson’s Henri Ducard (Ra's al Ghul) teaching Bale’s Bruce Wayne how to fight on a frozen pond. And based on the actor’s recollection, there were legitimate reasons to be concerned:
I did a scene with Christian Bale in Batman Begins like 14, 15 years ago in Iceland, and I was teaching him how to fight with these little swords. And we were literally fighting at the base of this huge glacier that had a pond of ice at the front, and we had ice wrangles. And so Christian and I would be on doing our dialogue and fighting and stuff. And suddenly the ice wrangler was like, ‘Stop, everybody off the ice.’ And we’d all come off really quick, and this glacier would move maybe two inches. And the noise that came up through the earth and seeing this ice buckle and then settle again was very, very frightening. And then they’d say, ‘OK, go back on the ice again.’ So Christian and I’d be looking at each other like, ‘Should we be doing this?’
I don’t know what makes me shiver more: the idea of working under such cold conditions or the thought of having to fight at the base of a glacier. The Batman Begins scene itself is tense to watch, but one can only imagine what it would be like to actually perform such a feat. Thankfully though, it sounds like filming continued without any cast or crew being injured.
At present, Liam Neeson doesn’t seem to have any interest in returning to the superhero genre, though it’s not due to the stunts that come with them. The actor explained that he’s not the biggest fan of the genre and would prefer not to spend hours working out every day to fit into a spandex costume. It’s honestly disappointing, especially when you consider how good he was in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. All three of those movies can be streamed on HBO Max, which you can sign up for using this link.
Fans may also be sad to hear that the 69-year-old Liam Neeson is making a major change, as the actor revealed earlier this year that he plans to retire from the action-thriller game relatively soon. But thankfully, Neeson still has a few more to come, with his next movie (ironically) being Netflix’s The Ice Road. The first trailer teased an intense movie that actually cost the streamer quite a bit of cash.
Whatever the future holds for Liam Neeson, let’s just be grateful that he’s been willing to put himself in tricky situations for the sake of our entertainment. It’ll be cool to see how he continues to surprise and shock audiences before he hangs it up for good.
