Liam Neeson ‘punches’ Jimmy Fallon on Tonight Show

The Ballymena actor was on The Tonight Show to promote his 100th film Marlowe in which he plays a brooding down on his luck 1930s detective hired to find the ex-lover of a glamorous heiress.

After taking his seat on set Neeson was shown an old photograph by the fawning host who said “everyone just loves you” and told him “you look like a stud”.

“I’m happy you are here for perm week – it’s a big thing in New York City,” Fallon said.

The US prime time presenter then produced a picture of a 20-year-old barefooted, long haired Neeson with his late dog Tara who was compared to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

Neeson revealed it was taken just after he met “my brother Ciaran Hinds” at a theatre festival in Holland which prompted a question about his first real acting job.

“There’s a theatre that Ciaran and myself are patrons of in Belfast called the Lyric Theatre – a very very good theatre,” he said.

"I was working in an architects office doing prints and stuff and I kept saying to these guys I’m going to be a professional actor.

"One of them called my bluff one lunchtime and said ‘call up the Lyric Theatre’ they literally pushed the telephone – it was one of the old ones you know – and I called.

"The lady who formed the theatre called Mary O’Malley she picked it up and I started vomiting I want to be an actor I’ve done all these amateur plays and I want to be professional.

"She said ‘what height are you?’ and I said 6ft 4, then she said ‘be up here next Thursday’ and that was kind of it.

“The height got me the gig.”

The Hollywood actor also revealed he once signed an autograph for a group of pensioners in Paris as Ralph Fiennes after being mistaken for The English Patient star.

A promo clip for Neeson’s latest flick, which stars Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange, prompted Fallon to seek a tutorial in the art of fake on-screen bust-ups.

“Can you show me how to throw a good punch?,” he sheepishly asked.

After a very quick rehearsal Neeson told the host “Jimmy this is the last time you chat up my girlfriend” and followed before pretending to land a number of blows.

Neeson has recently been reminiscing about former girlfriend Helen Mirren, describing her as a “remarkable woman” before saying she was “really something else”.

“I should be so lucky and be honoured to have spent three or four years with that lady. She’s really something else,” he told Entertainment Tonight Canada.

The pair first met while working on the set of the film Excalibur (1981).

“Before I met her and we worked together, I had read somewhere that if she fancied a guy she would imitate his walk behind his back. I turned around one day and she was doing that to me,” he added.