Neeson lucky to be alive

Actor Liam Neeson looks fighting fit as he arrives at the premier of his latest film knowing he is lucky to be alive.

The 50-year-old Northern Irishman is still having medical therapy after a serious motorbike accident which doctors believed he might not survive.

But the 6ft 4in star from Co Antrim wore the triumphant smile of someone who has beaten the odds as he posed with his superstar wife Natasha Richardson at the premier of K-19: The Widowmaker at the 59th Venice Film Festival.

Two years ago Neeson suffered a fractured pelvis, smashed right heel and shredded skin on both legs after a deer ran out in front of his motorbike in upstate New York.

“The accident was pure David Lynch,” he recently said, referring to the Twin Peaks director famed for his surreal and violent imagery.

“At one point the deer was over my handle bars and I was trying to keep balanced.”

Afterwards doctors told him that 60% of people with those sort of injuries died because of blood clots while his surgeons warned he might not walk again without crutches.

Richardson recently said the accident hasn’t changed her husband and that he is still “the same grumpy b****** of an Irishman”.

Neeson is set to star alongside his wife in a Euro 20m film called Asylum to be made in Ireland next year.