Neeson Stars In A-Team Revival

The A-Team is to hit cinema screens next year, with a big budget remake of the 1980s TV series.

It's just part of the work 'in progress' for a top Northern Ireland actor.

Although still grieving the loss of his wife who was fatally injured while skiing (the couple are shown here before the tragedy), Co Antrim's Liam Neeson has landed one of his biggest roles to date. He will have a cameo role in The Next Three Days, a remake of French film Pour Elle.

The thriller, which stars Russell Crowe as a man driven to despair when his wife is convicted of murder, is due for release late next year.

The actor - who is best known for the Oscar-winning Schindler’s List - will also star in the highly-anticipated Clash Of The Titans and The A-Team, also scheduled for release in 2010.

Neeson will play Hannibal in the A-Team, a part immortalised by George Peppard in the original.

In Clash Of The Titans he plays Zeus alongside his friend Ralph Fiennes in the role of Hades.

It is the pair's first project together since Schindler’s List in 1994.

Clash Of The Titans also features Irish actors Martin McCann and Liam Cunningham in supporting roles.

However, the success is still tinged with sadness for the Ballymena-born actor.

In a previous interview on US TV to promote the post-Troubles film, Five Minutes Of Heaven - in which he starred with James Nesbitt - the actor said he and his two sons were "doing good" after her death.

The actor, 56, also said that art had been helping him heal the pain of his wife - the actress Natasha Richardson's - sudden death.

He was speaking while accepting an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast.

In an emotional speech, he quoted Armagh poet Paul Muldoon, whose words alluded to his recent troubles.

Neeson said art "builds from pain, from misery, from a deep-seated hurt, a monument to the human heart that shines like a golden dome among roofs rain-glazed and leaden".

The actor was awarded the honorary doctorate for his Outstanding Contribution and Service to the Arts in May this year by the Vice Chancellor of Queen's, Professor Peter Gregson, at a ceremony in the British Consulate in New York.

(BMcC/GK)