Liam Neeson
Interview By: Jeff Wilser
JeffWilser@TheCinemaSource.com
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Liam Neeson knows how to take risks. In the new biopic Kinsey, Neeson plays the controversial sex-researcher, a performance that has critics swooning and the red states fuming. His character talks blithely about masturbation, encourages promiscuity, and shares a passionate kiss with another man.
Not exactly Qui-Gon Jinn. Then again, thank God for that. Neeson sat down with The Cinema Source to discuss his edgy performance. Much like Kinsey himself, Neeson is calm and well spoken.
The similarities end there. When asked how he compares himself to Kinsey—the insatiable collector of data—Neeson pauses, grasping for a likeness. “Let’s see. I don’t collect things. Well I do. I collect fishing rods.” His voice is soothing. Almost dream-like. Part of it is his soft Irish accent, which has the nifty trick of adding import to each word. “I don’t know. He was so far removed for me. He was a character to play.”
Kinsey is a polarizing figure, and the film deftly shows both sides of his persona—the impassioned, truth-seeking scientist, and the man who’s gone too far. Neeson is proud of that ambiguity. “Bill [Condon, the writer and director] certainly didn’t want to paint some holier-than-thou picture, and I certainly didn’t want to act in a film like that. I do think the film is fair and accurate and balanced, and touches on the controversy in his life and in his character.”
Yeah, yeah, that’s all great and all . . . but let’s get to the juice. Does he think, like his character, that you can separate love and sex? He pauses. “Yeah. I think we can.” Then he lets just a trace of dry humor slip into his voice. “I certainly think men can, more easily than women can, but that’s a two hour discussion.”
Kinsey was bisexual, an issue the film addresses head-on. While sharing a hotel room, Neeson’s character has an open-mouth kiss with a naked Peter Sarsgaard. So . . . how did that compare with kissing a
Out of Kinsey’s thousands—literally hundreds of thousands—of interview subjects, only one true monster stands out: Kenneth Braun (a chilling William Sadler), an “omni-file,” in Neeson’s words. While discussing Braun, for the first and only time, Neeson shows just the slightest touch of disapproval with Kinsey. “He was this bespectacled little government employee, the most anonymous little man in his early 60s. Kinsey conducted these interviews [with him] that apparently lasted 17 hours straight. This man had this material—books after books after books.” (The books contained deviant data about sex with children, non-consensual intercourse, etc.)
In measured tones, Neeson continues. “Of course to Kinsey—being a taxonomist himself, and a star taxonomist—this was incredible to have this stuff. He loved collecting data. And in fact, there was a scene in the film—with Laura Linney, his onscreen wife] and I—where we’re both lying in the bed, and she’s saying to me, ‘You shouldn’t use that data.’ And Kinsey’s determined that he can use it. Which is very controversial. And his co-workers said you shouldn’t use it. But he did. I think wrongly, too. The scene’s not in the film, for various reasons.”
There was no sex education during Neeson’s upbringing. In Ireland, he learned about sex “off bathroom walls,” he says. “Crude sketches. That’s the way I learned it, unfortunately. And by feeling enormous pangs of guilt about looking at these enormous Picasso-esque drawings of males and females.”
So . . . how old was he, when he saw this phallic graffiti? “Oh, 27 or so.” He laughs, clearly joking, and the rest of the room joins him.
