Devoted to boxing as a child ... Liam Neeson narrates a documentary on the life of Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao. Picture: Larry Busacca / Getty Images Source: Getty Images

Neeson, now 62, took up the sport aged nine and started competing seriously at 11. He says he dreamt of turning pro and winning a title.

“Of course at that age you are thinking that. Muhammad Ali had won the world title and he was like a god, certainly to me,” the Irish actor says. “I have a photograph of Ali I remember cutting out as a 12 year old and he was an amateur boxer and I remember thinking: ‘My God, Ali’s 12 and I am 12. I could be the same!’ You think all that stuff.”

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Greatest boxer of his era and beyond ... Muhammad Ali kisses Bert Bert Newton at the TV Week Logie Awards. Source: News Corp Australia

In his late teens Neeson was forced to choose between professional boxing and acting. His subsequent career suggests he made the right decision, even if he does have a few unfulfilled dreams.

“I was getting more heavily involved in amateur drama and there just wasn’t the time,” he says. “By that stage, 16 or 17 years of age … I certainly felt that I needed to be training five or six nights a week and I just couldn’t put that time in. And I thought ‘If I can’t put the time in, that’s when you get hurt. So I bowed out gracefully. By that stage I knew I was a competent boxer. I wasn’t great, I was competent. I won a few titles. I had a good left jab.”

His enthusiasm for the sport has never waned and he went on to become friends with Irish boxer Barry McGuigan. His love of boxing prompted him to narrate a new documentary about the life of Manny Pacquiao, the story of a starving teenager who fought to feed his family and went on to become a ten time world champion, politician and international icon.

WBO welterweight boxing title fight ... Manny Pacquiao, of the Philippines, lands a right to the head of Miguel Cotto on November 14, 2009 in Las Vegas. Picture: AP / Mark J. Terrill Source: AP

Apart from never before seen home footage, Manny also features a host of celeb interviewees including Mark Wahlberg, Jimmy Kimmel and Jeremy Piven.

Neeson says he’s followed and admired Pacquiao since he first travelled to the US to fight. “He has this fierce instinct,” he says. “He is from the jungles and, as he says himself in the documentary, he is not just fighting for the love of the sport, he is fighting for the Philippines, he is fighting for his mum and he is fighting for his whole kith and kin. You cannot defeat that.”

Despite years of boxing training, Neeson says it is practically useless when it comes to filming movie action sequences. “I love doing those movie fights and I do all those myself, so I know what goes into them, but it is totally different. Other than keeping fit,” he says. “It is a different discipline. In movies you are learning how to fake punches and make them look real.”

One of the world’s greatest boxers ... Welterweight champion Manny (PacMan) Pacquiao stops training for a publicity shot before his fight against Miguel Cotto in Los Angeles on November 4, 2009. Picture: AFP / Mark Ralston Source: AFP

Manny is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.