Liam's new lease of life

He made the excruciating climb and collapsed in a pool of his own sweat on the gravel at the side of the road. "Finally, an old guy came by in a truck and saw me," Neeson smiles. "I told him, 'Sir, I'm really happy to see you.'"

He was rushed to a local hospital. The prognosis wasn't good. His pelvis was broken in three places and his heel was almost destroyed. Doctors would have to bolt both areas back together if he was to walk again: there was a chance he would never stand. "Something like 60 per cent of people die from these sorts of pelvic injuries because of the blood clots. I didn't know that was possible so I couldn't worry about it, which was a blessing," Neeson says. "Later I learned that keeping very fit my entire life also helped to save my life."

The day after his first series of operations, the doctors forced him to sit up for five minutes: he did it for 15. It was weeks later that he walked again. "It was one of the biggest victories of my life when I got down the entire hospital corridor on my walker," he recalls, voice almost a whisper, eyes unfocused. "I was covered in sweat and almost crying from the pain, but I was smiling. I knew I had to do this for my family."

His wife Natasha was, he says, "an angel during my recovery. She was there every minute holding my hand, which was a wonderful inspiration. She's a good girl. Seeing her gave me a little extra strength each day." There were encouraging cards and flowers from fans. "They just said, 'You can do it.' One lady sent me a prayer to St Francis - for the deer!" And there was a professional motivation for Neeson to recover, too.

Just before the accident, he had been offered what many considered to be the role of his career - as Leonardo DiCaprio's father in Martin Scorsese's epic film Gangs of New York, due out at Christmas. "Just knowing that I was going to work with Scorsese gave me a beacon, a light to shoot towards." He grins that big, easy grin again. "A few of Marty's guys visited me in the hospital to check out the goods. I was like, 'It's coming along. I will be there. I want to work.'"

Watching him joke, you see in the strapping man a hint of the boy who was born William John Leeson in 1952, the son of Kitty, a school cook, and Barney, a caretaker, Catholics in Ian Paisley's County Antrim hometown of Ballymena. Wanting to improve his son's confidence, Barney encouraged young Liam to take up boxing: he won the Ulster youth championship three years in succession, and also received the broken nose that lends the authoritative cast to his face.

The aspects of boxing he said he enjoyed - exposure, risk, ritual - led him to join an am-dram group run by his old English teacher, working his way up, via the Belfast Lyric Players' Theatre, to Dublin's Abbey Theatre. It was there, during a production of Of Mice and Men - he was cast, naturally, as the huge and powerful Lenny - that director John Boorman spotted Neeson and cast him as Gawain in his 1981 Arthurian adventure, Excalibur.

By the time the film came out, Neeson was in London, living with Helen Mirren, who had played Morgana. After a few television roles and stints at the National Theatre he headed to America, pursuing parts in movies like Suspect and The Good Mother, as well as affairs with Julia Roberts, Barbra Streisand, Sinead O'Connor and Brooke Shields.

Tellingly, most of them remain good friends. When a series of big-budget projects bombed, he took smaller roles in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives and Ethan Frome. By 1990, though, he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Los Angeles: "It's like they jog for two hours a day and think they're morally right."

It was then that Natasha Richardson, whom he'd first met on a forgettable 1984 mini-series, reappeared in his life. Richardson was starring in and producing Anna Christie on Broadway: she cast Neeson and promptly left her husband for him. He won a Tony award, and was noticed by Steven Spielberg, who was looking for someone to play Oskar Schindler.

If that role cemented his star status, few of his subsequent film roles - with the arguable exceptions of Rob Roy (1995) and Michael Collins (1996) - lived up to it. The draining experience of working on the first Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, convinced him that the instinct-driven characters he craved were not to be found on the big screen.

Vowing never to make another film, he focused instead on the stage and his idyllic family life, taking his sons fly-fishing and brushing up his carpentry skills.

But the promise of working with Scorsese drew him back, as did the chance to play a rival Russian sub commander to Harrison Ford in K-19: The Widowmaker. Based on a true story, it tells of the near catastrophic accident that befell the USSR's first nuclear submarine during the cold war.

He completed both films after recovering from his accident, and also slotted in an acclaimed stint on Broadway in The Crucible. K19 was, he says, "a tough film because of the Russian accent and the technical jargon. You had to learn how to work a sub."

He's looking forward to the release of Gangs of New York. "I loved it for historical reasons and I'll never forget working with Marty, who is a genius" - and also to his next movie, a prequel to The Exorcist in which he meets the devil. Should Liam Neeson need a more immediate reminder of mortality, though, he can always look at his X-rays.

Inside, I look like Herman Munster," he says, making a rueful face. "I can barely get through an airport. Tel Aviv, Munich and Athens are the worst places for me. They want to interrogate me because I set off every single alarm," he says. The accident put things in perspective: "It reminded me that the acting is sometimes the least important thing in my life. It was all about seeing my wife and kids again when I was crumpled up in that ditch."

He and Richardson are planning to co-star in a stage revival of Camelot: mention of the project prompts a happy laugh. I say that his brush with death seems to have lightened his once-brooding demeanour.

He cocks an eyebrow. "My wife says I'm still the same grumpy bastard of an Irishman as I was before," he says, "And she would know."