Liam Neeson once came close to a physical fight with Harvey Weinstein, according to a new memoir by a former Hollywood marketing executive. Gerry Rich writes in Chasing Hollywood that the actor confronted the producer at a private screening of the 1993 Miramax drama Ethan Frome, angry that the film had been recut without the lead actors being told.
Page Six obtained the book ahead of its release. In Rich’s telling, Neeson stormed into the Tribeca Film Center to have it out with Weinstein. “You don’t want to do this, Harvey!” the actor supposedly shouted. Weinstein reportedly replied, “I do what I want. I’m a millionaire!” Rich writes that Neeson looked at him in confusion before answering that he was a millionaire too, that money had nothing to do with it, and that Weinstein did not want to fight him.
Weinstein has offered his own short version of events. He told Page Six that tempers did flare during the confrontation, and joked at the time that he was not foolish enough to shove Neeson. HELLO! contacted Neeson’s representatives for comment, and no response was included in its report. The clash took place more than a decade before Weinstein’s fall, at a time when he was one of the most powerful producers in the industry, with Oscar winners such as Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love to his name.
That changed in 2017, when investigative reports exposed decades of allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct against him and helped spark the MeToo movement. He was later convicted of multiple sexual assault and rape offences in trials in New York and Los Angeles and was handed a lengthy prison sentence. Rich, meanwhile, spent his career at Paramount, Miramax, Columbia Pictures, Universal and MGM, where he became head of marketing at 32. His memoir also includes stories about James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli and Jackass star Johnny Knoxville.
Neeson, now 74, remains busy despite having said after the pandemic that he would step back from action films once his existing commitments were done. His latest role is opposite Zachary Levi in The Fix, a CIA spy thriller directed by Guy Moshe, and he has also moved into comedy with The Naked Gun reboot and Love Is Not the Answer alongside Pamela Anderson. Chasing Hollywood has not yet been published, and the Ethan Frome account comes from Rich’s version of events.
