Growing up on the mean streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s helped actor Liam Neeson shape his vengeful character in new period movie Seraphim Falls.

The Michael Collins star admits he only had to conjure up memories of his upbringing in the troubled city to set himself up to play an American Civil War colonel with a score to settle.

Neeson says, "I've ruminated a lot and meditated a lot on revenge because I'm from the north of Ireland and a child of the 60s and 70s there. I was surrounded by violence for most of my young adult life. I wasn't involved in it but I knew men who were and the idea of revenge or trying to right a wrong that was done 400 years ago just seemed anathema to me. And yet I respected these people's passion for what they were committed to. There is a certain nobility to it to a certain extent but the idea of dying for your country; the hardest thing to do and the bravest thing to do is to live for your country, which I wanted to do. I'm very proud to be Irish but I certainly wasn't going to pick up a gun and kill a fellow Irishman or anybody else from any other country to prove my love for my country."

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(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)