There's nothing better than finding out that your favourite film stars are as badass when the cameras aren't rolling as they are when filming is in full swing.
Last year Keanu Reeves learned martial arts and various driving tricks, and did extensive weapons training for his part in John Wick 2, while icons like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee made their names by performing their own stunts.
Well, as it turns out, everyone's favourite Irish Hollywood hard man, Liam Neeson, credits a lot of his success in the world of film to the discipline and work ethic he built up as an amateur boxer in Ireland in the 1960s.
Neeson's relationship with the sport, which he still follows to this day, began in childhood at a Sunday school, when his parish priest announced that he would be teaching a boxing class several days a week.
Credit: PA
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"He had two ropey pairs of ratty, old, ancient boxing gloves and a book on how to box," Neeson recalled in an 2014 interview for Huffington Post. "He started at page one - we learned how to throw a left jab and did all that, and then six years later - I say this very, very proudly - he guided our club to become one of the best clubs in Ireland.
"I made some very dear friends, and still have some very dear friends from the boxing years.
"I was an amateur. I won a few titles. Looking back, I'd say I was competent."
'Competent' is probably just Neeson being modest. As a young lad, he was a highly talented amateur fighter, making his first ring appearance at just 11 years old and going on to become three-times Northern Ireland champion, with many in the know tipping him for future greatness.
"I was juvenile champion of Northern Ireland three times and Irish runner-up a couple of times in my weight division," remembered Neeson in an interview for ESPN in 2012. "I was a jabber, I had a good jab. I had about 40 fights and I won about maybe 30."
LiamNeeson in The Big Man, 1990. Image credit: Miramax
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As a promising young boxer, things could have worked out very differently for the Irishman, but one unsettling post-fight experience made him decide to leave the ring for good.
"It was maybe close to my last fight," recalled Neeson. "I must have been 16. I actually won the fight.
"But I came out of the ring and I had obviously got a concussion because my trainer said to go downstairs and take my clothes off and stuff, and I couldn't figure out what downstairs meant.
"It kind of freaked me out a bit. It lasted for about three minutes or so. I remember thinking, 'I've got to get out of this. It's not comfortable anymore.'"
While his boxing years are well and truly behind him, Neeson regularly draws on the skills he learned in the ring for film parts, and the discipline he acquired while learning to fight has pushed him on to become the action movie hero we all know and love today.
"Boxing and training, sometimes three or four times a week, gave me a work ethic. If you want something you have to fight for it and work towards it. There is no discipline greater [than boxing]. When you are in the ring, you are in there with all your strengths and all your weaknesses.
"You can't act being a boxer in the ring, you really can't."
Featured Image Credit: 20th Century Fox