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'Acting Is a Form of Prayer'
Liam Neeson rediscovered spirituality when he realized his passion for acting itself was a connection to the divine
By Retta Blaney
Excerpted from "Working on the Inside," by Retta Blaney, with permission from Rowman & Littlefield publishers.

Learning to look at work as prayer is something Liam Neeson discovered in the jungles of Colombia, South America, while filming "The Mission," a 1986 movie about eighteenth-century Jesuits. "I was at a crossroads in my life," he says. "I was reasonably successful as an actor. I was thirty-two or thirty-three with a potential career ahead of me. I had done some flimflam movies, but I didn't understand what being an actor meant anymore."...

...Through his Jesuit research Neeson made a discovery that deeply affected his outlook. He learned about the Spiritual Exercises of Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola who encouraged his students to study scripture by taking the part of a character in a Bible story, such as a shepherd in the stable at Bethlehem, and employing all the senses to imaginatively enter into the scene. Neeson recognized the connection between the Spiritual Exercises and Konstantin Stanislavsky's "An Actor Prepares," which deals with the profound process an actor should go through to present a part onstage.

"I found out in the jungles of South America that Stanislavsky had based his technique on the Spiritual Exercises. It was a real revelation to me, and it brought two big parts of my life together. The Irish Catholic side was married to the life of an actor and I found out acting could be a form of prayer. It helped me knowing that. It was like a little godsend message." Now he uses that form of prayer for others. "I offer my performance as prayer for someone I've worked with as an actor or someone who has died. The image that comes into my head as I walk to the stage, I offer that performance up for that person."...

...Living now in New York and continuing to act in movies and onstage, he attends Mass occasionally and says his faith is different from that of his altar boy years. "I question more now. I don't mean that it's all hokum, but I've lost a simple faith. I do still believe, but I like to encompass all religions now. I believe we're all paying homage to God."

But churchgoing is still a part of his life. "I always drop in a church when passing to say my Catholic prayers, and I make sure my children say them." He is raising his two sons Catholic because "they should learn some roots in a certain dogma. Not The One True Church, but I tell them there was a man called Jesus Christ who was the Son of God, simple stories, that he was a man the world is still figuring, he is." Churches are "comforting places," he says. "Generally I just give thanks for how lucky I am. I'm healthy, I have some money in the bank, I have healthy children and a wonderful wife."