10 Actors Who Dramatically Rebranded Themselves In The Last Decade

Although Liam Neeson began his career with a few action-oriented roles - Excalibur, The Dead Pool, Darkman - he became notable in the 90s for his star-making turns in very, very serious fare like Schindler's List and Michael Collins. That's why it felt so strange to see him dueling Darth Maul while dressed in full Jedi regalia in 1999.

Flash forward a decade and the man who played Oskar Schindler is somehow the biggest action star on the planet.

Building off his role as Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins, Neeson found himself as the most dangerous sexagenarian ever captured on film in the revenge flick, Taken, which the actor believed would be a straight-to-video bomb. Boy was he wrong. It was actually the launching point for the gravelly-voiced 60-year-old's credibility as a full-fledged badass.

Neeson says he continued taking whatever work came to him following the sudden death of his wife in 2009. So while he might not have loved the scripts for Clash of the Titans or The A-Team, he signed on just to keep himself busy. Despite some lukewarm critical reception, Neeson continued ascending to the top of the action hero heap, turning in one of the finest performances of his career with The Grey.

Unfortunately, Neeson also managed to ruin his resurgence by starring in about a dozen Taken-esque movies, only a handful of which carried the franchise's name.