Neeson's Princess Bride Audition Did Not Go Well

Liam Neeson isn't what you would call diminutive—the Irish actor stands 6-foot-4—but there was one role he was too short for. Neeson tells Entertainment Weekly that the most embarrassing moment from his long acting career came in 1987, when he auditioned for the role of Fezzik in The Princess Bride. He recalls that director Rob Reiner had a "look of disgust" on his face. "He turned to the casting director and said, 'I asked for a giant,'" Neeson says. "No 'Hello,' 'Thanks for coming.' Nothing like that." He says he was even more embarrassed for the casting director. "I felt bad for her," he says, though she ended up delivering what Reiner wanted—the role went to 7-foot-4 wrestler Andre the Giant.

Neeson stars alongside Pamela Anderson in the reboot of The Naked Gun, which is out Aug. 1. He tells Entertainment Weekly that he loved the movies with Leslie Nielsen, who died in 2010, and wasn't sure he could pull off the role of Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. Producer Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy, chose Neeson. "Liam Neeson is probably the only actor alive in the 21st century who could do what Leslie Nielsen did, largely because that kind of actor is not something that we're really generating a lot of in Hollywood anymore," MacFarlane says. Neeson, he says, is "larger than life on screen and yet so honest, two things that don't always mesh, but he's really able to be that kind of an on-camera powerhouse."