Taken, the new edge-of-your-seat thriller, starring Liam Neeson and Maggie Grace tells the story of a father who will do anything to rescue his kidnapped daughter. The two leads shared their favorite parts of shooting, and Neeson explains why he was practically passing out from exhaustion every day after filming.

Q: Can you tell us a little about this project?

Neeson: It’s essentially about a father trying to find his daughter; he has four days to find her. And in the course of those four days, audiences discover that he has a certain set of skills to protect himself and look after himself and dispose of the enemy.

Grace: Liam plays an ex-spy who is estranged from his daughter and is trying to reclaim that relationship, and I play his daughter. She is abducted while traveling in Europe by an international sex-trafficking ring. He has about 96 hours to get her back before she is gone. So, it’s very personal and he really brings a lot to it. It’s not just a shoot em’ up and a good excuse for a car chase; he really brings so much to it, which is nice to see in this genre. And it’s unrelenting in pace. The script is so tight there’s not a moment wasted. I was gripping the seat sitting in the screening, and I know what happens.

Q: Why did you decide to do the movie?

Grace: Working with all of these people, like Liam Neeson. It was crazy, because I made a list of who I really wanted to work with someday three weeks before I read the script, and he was on top of the list. I was a little terrified, but he is wonderful and as gracious as could be.

Q: Can you tell us about Neeson’s intensity on set?

Grace: I think there is this natural sense to him that we’ve seen in a lot of roles; this sort of moral compass or man of substance. He has this presence that is very solid and substantial, and very good. I’m sure he has played some bad guys, but there is definitely a goodness about him that you really sense.

Q: What was your favorite part of shooting this film?

Neeson: I did love the fighting; I loved doing the physical stuff. I am very proud to say I did all those fights myself. I have a brilliant stunt man, Mark, who did all the serious stunts. It’s fun to do that. I certainly slept well at night, that’s for sure.  A glass of wine at night and I went straight to bed.

Grace: My favorite parts were the scenes between Liam and me in the beginning when we are trying to reclaim the relationship and trying to find all these years I missed and who he really is now that I’m old enough to get to know him as a person; [that] was really amazing. But that’s the typical response. ‘The scenes that I’m in the most, I loved.’ The movie is about a girl. It’s like the great line in Shakespeare in Love, 'There is this play about a nurse, and there’s Romeo and Juliet and whatever, but really it’s about a nurse.'

Was there anything really difficult or out of your comfort zone to shoot?

Nesson: A couple of scenes I had moral objections to when we were shooting them. A torture scene that we were giving too much away that I was unsure about, but there was kind of no way around it for this character. It was one of the final pieces to the jig jaw puzzle that he needed to find his daughter. But it wasn’t easy shooting it; I hope that moral dilemma in me, Liam Neeson the actor, comes across.

Q: What surprised you most about shooting the action scenes?

Grace: The amount of takes to execute, Liam could have run a marathon after this movie because he did almost all of his own stunts. I would see him at the hotel at the end of the day and he would be practically passed out in the lobby. The guy was amazing; it was really incredible what he did every day for awhile. Especially because not every movie he does is demanding in that way, so it was pretty amazing how he stepped up to the plate. It’s always amazing to me when people come to the set for the first time, a couple of my friends stopped by the set, and see how it truly is; we’d be on take 65, and poor Liam was like, ‘Really?’

Q: What drives your character, Liam, to keep going to find his daughter?

Neeson: You will do anything to save your child; it’s as basic as that. You hear stories of mothers being able to lift cars because their toddler is trapped or something that adrenaline – that primordial adrenaline – makes you capable of doing anything, and that applies to this guy certainly.