Neeson's mother receives hate mail

Liam Neeson's mother has received letters slamming her son's decision to play sexual pioneer Alfred Kinsey in biopic Kinsey.

The 51-year-old actor's mother received correspondence from "anonymous strangers" following Neeson's casting as the controversial Kinsey, who caused outrage across America in 1948 with his book, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male.

He says: "Before the film started my mother in Ireland was receiving postcards from anonymous strangers, addressed to 'Liam Neeson, Film Star, Northern Ireland'.

"They said: 'Kinsey was a bad man and you shouldn't be making a movie about him.'

"But controversy is good, and I think we show something of the man and those times, warts and all. He was a flawed sexual pioneer, and that's what you see in the film."