Just over a year since he was last here for the premiere of Michael Collins, Liam Neeson was back in Dublin yesterday for a different kind of launch. The tall, bespectacled actor was smartly dressed in suit and tie and wearing his hat as Special Patron of UNICEF Ireland to promote the Change For Good scheme which UNICEF has organised in association with Aer Lingus.
The scheme, which will be introduced on all Aer Lingus transatlantic flights from today, is based on the in-flight collection of unwanted and unusable foreign notes and coins from passengers. Neeson features in the airline's video which exhorts travellers to place the money in envelopes supplied by the cabin crew.
"Whenever I travel abroad, whether for work or pleasure, I always end up with some unusable foreign currency on my journey home," he said at the launch. "UNICEF's Change For Good shows how amounts as little as 7p can save a child's life from dehydration, or how $2 can provide books for a child in a world where over 140 million children never get a chance of a basic education. A little does go a long way."
At the end of the press conference the strapping Ballymena-born actor was swamped by normally blase journalists seeking his autograph and asking him to pose with them for photographs.
Relaxing over a glass of wine afterwards, he was making inquiries about the format of the Late Late toy show, which he had never seen and on which he was appearing last night to promote the Change For Good scheme.
He declared himself delighted with the record-breaking Irish box-office success of Michael Collins, in which he played the title role and earned the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival last year for his performance.
Since then he's been busy starring in Les Miserables, which was filmed in Prague earlier this year. "No, I don't get to sing in this," he said. "This is Victor Hugo, not the musical." Next came co-starring with Ewan McGregor in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars prequel which is not due in cinemas until 1999.
"That was a really technical film to do. Half the time I'm acting with things which I can't even see - because they are special effects to be added in later."
And he has been babysitting while his wife, Natasha Richardson, has been working on Disney's remake of the The Parent Trap, which starred the young Hayley Mills as twin sisters and which Liam fondly remembers from his Ballymena schooldays. Nastasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid are cast as the twins' parents, in the roles played by Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith in the original.
Now Neeson is preparing to return to stage, playing Oscar Wilde in the new David Hare play, The Judas Kiss, which opens at the Playhouse in London in February before transferring to Broadway. While in Dublin Neeson was curious to see the recent movie, Wilde, in which, coincidentally, his mother-in-law, Vanessa Redgrave, plays Oscar Wilde's mother, Speranza.