Liam Neeson Reveals the Action Secrets of His New Thriller ‘The Ice Road’

There’s nothing Liam Neeson can’t or won’t do – including jumping into freezing cold water as he takes on his newest role as an ice road trucker. The prolific Irish actor became a bona fide action star when he appeared in the popular Taken franchise. Now he leads the upcoming action film The Ice Road, a thrilling race against the clock as seasoned truck drivers attempt to cross quickly thawing ice and battle violent pressure waves to deliver the equipment needed to rescue a group of miners who’ve become trapped in northern Canada.

Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh (Die Hard with a Vengeance), the film was inspired by the 1953 thriller The Wages of Fear. Neeson portrays the grizzled and hard-working Mike McCann, an experienced long-haul driver who takes pride in his job and also acts as the caretaker for his younger brother, Gurty (Marcus Thomas), who has aphasia due to an injury sustained while serving in Iraq.

The film’s producers wanted the movie to feel realistic, so not only was it actually filmed on a frozen lake in Winnipeg, but they used very little green screen, employing daring practical effects for the high octane passages instead. Meanwhile, Neeson, enjoying his latter day career as an action hero, jumped in freezing water for a rescue scene. We recently caught up with Neeson to chat about the film and how it was made.

What drew you to The Ice Road?

I’m attracted to stories where men and women are pushed to extremes, especially when the elements are dangerous, like geographically and weather-wise. Something else comes out in the human spirit when men and women are in potentially very dangerous situations. I thought the script to be a real page-turner.

How did you film the driving scenes?

The whole cabin of the truck fits on a normal flatbed truck. When the camera’s inside the cabin, it looks as if you’re actually really in the truck itself. So the interior of the truck is all there but it’s essentially a shell. And the camera’s back [behind me] and I’m driving and it looks as if the camera can see out onto the ice and snow. But I’m not, in fact, driving the truck. It’s a guy down below in the real truck who’s driving.

Do you do your own stunts in your films?

I’m not one of these actors who says “I do my own stunts.” I don’t do stunts. However, I do my own fighting. I like doing that. So I do that as much as possible. But stunts, no. I leave that up to Mark Vanselow. He is a fight choreographer and he’s my stunt double. This was our 24th film together. He’s a very dear pal as well. I totally trust him. We’ve done many fight scenes together in various places all over the world with various stuntmen. Mark’s like a rock. If he’s organizing a fight scene, for example, he’ll record it first on his iPhone and then he’ll show it to me. I might make a couple of suggestions, but more often than not I don’t because it looks really good.

What action are you excited for the audience to see?

Mine and Marcus’ characters fall into a crack in the ice. One of our trucks gets embedded in the ice, so we have to go into the ice cold water. We had dry suits on, but my hands were bare. And I’m trying to save my brother. We had to submerge ourselves under the water and hold it for ten, twelve seconds, and come back up again. For the life of me I could not stop thinking about the Titanic victims because my hands were so painful in the cold. Apparently if you fall into water this cold, the experts were saying you have 60 seconds to try and control your breathing otherwise you’re a goner.

That was a bit worrying to me to hear about it for the first time, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m just an actor, I don’t want to die this way.’ But it was cold, really cold, and there’s bits of ice floating about and stuff. It was all real ice, not candy glass or anything like that. But that adds to the excitement, which is real. So, I think the audience is in for some interesting thrills.

The Ice Road premieres June 25 on Netflix.