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“I’m getting a bit old for this”, laughs Liam Neeson when talking about his new action movie Non-Stop, now playing in cinemas.

At 60, Neeson, once celebrated for roles as diverse as Oskar Schindler and Michael Collins, is giving present day action stars a run for their money as an aging, experienced, man-of-action, who is often caught up in circumstances that require either a lot of automotive collisions or snapping a lot of human-joints.

In Non-Stop, Neeson plays an air-phobic air marshal, whose flight is high-jacked by a terrorist with a flair for text-messaging, with a demand of millions – or else. The movie is Neeson’s second collaboration with director Jaume Collet-Serra, whose movie career includes The House of Wax, Orphan, Goal II and Unknown.

Q: Do they let you do all the stunts yourself?

A: No, no, no. I’ve got a great stunt guy. But, (they did) bash me up against a fake mirror that shatters during a bathroom fight. You’re not aware of being hurt at the time, because the adrenaline kicks in, but you do see a bruise of two later and think, “How did I get that?” But it’s all good fun and there are great stunt guys for all the really difficult stuff.

Q: So, who is your character?

A: Bill Marks is an air marshal and when we first meet him he’s trying to come to terms with the death of his child and he has hit the bottle pretty hard. He used to be in the New York Police Department, so working as an air marshal now is a bit of a demotion. But it’s also a last chance to prove himself as an officer of the law, of sorts.

Strangely, given his job, he’s a bit of an air-phobic. I don’t want to give too much away but there’s somebody on the flight who’s out to prove something and everyone on board becomes a suspect. My character keeps getting texts on his special telephone saying that unless a vast sum of money is paid into an unnamed account someone on board is going to die every 20 minutes, which sure enough they do.

We tried to make him a lot more three-dimensional than the usual action character. We layered on all kinds of small things so that he became a much more fleshed out character between the first reading of the script and (when we finished shooting).

Q: And did you find that there was still plenty of room for that, despite the fact that it’s such an action movie running on borrowed time on a limited space?

A: Yes, definitely, I think so, and it will be great if we pull it off because 99 percent of the movie is on board the plane.

Q: Does shooting in a single set make it more challenging?

A: Yes (it does). We (did shoot) a couple of days on location at JFK but the rest of the action takes place in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a plane that’s flying at 40,000 feet (we’ve had a brilliant replica of the inside of the aircraft built in a New York studio to work in).(Shooting on set also) meant that Jaume has had to be very creative about the way he’s filming. In one sequence we’ve filmed 10 pages of dialogue in one big take in which the camera follows me around, from suspect to suspect. It was pretty intense. But it had a wonderful feeling of achievement at the end of it.

Q: How is it like working with Mr Collet-Serra?

A: I love working with Jaume because he’s not a dictator, shouter or screamer. He’s a great guy and a sweet man to be around – and he just gets on with the job very quietly and methodically. On top of that, he’s also got an incredible director’s eye and a real sense of what’s needed to tell a story in an entertaining fashion while developing tension and pace. But he never lets the action entirely overshadow the characters. (As I said before, this makes) Bill Marks, a very three-dimensional action hero.

Q: Now that you’ve played an air marshal, would you be able to spot one on a plane?

A: No, I don’t think I could. They are very good at traveling incognito, of course, because it’s part of the job. However, I did stop two guys after a flight about five years ago. You know how it is, you’re sitting on an airplane and you’re bored and you just observe people. And I’d been watching them. So, after we landed I said, “Forgive me, but I’m an actor and I like observing people. Are you an air marshal?” And it turned out one of them was, although the other guy was a teacher! (So), I was only 50 percent right. I’m probably a better actor than I am a detective (laughs).

Generic interview courtesy, Asim Quraishi of Brand Cinema, arranged by Universal.