Portal:20th Century Studios/Selected biography/6
William John Neeson OBE (born 7 June 1952) is an actor from Northern Ireland. He has received several accolades throughout his career, including nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Tony Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, Neeson was listed at number 7 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's 50 greatest film actors.
In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast for two years. He then acted in the Arthurian film Excalibur (1981). He starred in five films between 1982 and 1987, most notably The Bounty (1984) and The Mission (1986). He landed a leading role in Next of Kin (1989) and rose to prominence when he starred as Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List (1993). He has since starred in highly successful films such as the drama Nell (1994), the historical biopic Michael Collins (1996), Les Misérables (1998), the space opera Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), the biographical drama Kinsey (2004), the superhero film Batman Begins (2005), the action thriller series Taken (2008–2014), the survival film The Grey (2011), and Martin Scorsese's religious epic Silence (2016). He also provided the voices of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narniatrilogy (2005–2010) and the titular monster in A Monster Calls (2016).