Why The High King Gil-Galad On Amazon's Rings Of Power Looks So Familiar

Earlier this year, Benjamin Walker had a major supporting role in the Netflix thriller "The Ice Road." The film stars Liam Neeson as Mike McCann, one of four truckers who has to drive mining equipment across treacherous icy roads so that a group of trapped miners can be rescued. Walker plays Tom Varnay, a mining company actuary who's sent along to assess the insurance situation. Sure enough, in the grand tradition established by characters like Paul Reiser's Carter Burke in Aliens, the company man betrays them.

For Walker, performing alongside an acting legend like Liam Neeson was instructive. Even though Walker isn't known for his action movie abilities like Neeson is, it still taught him a lot about how those stories work.

"A lot of movies have action in them. But what was the most interesting part about doing action with [Neeson] was that he approached it as an opportunity for storytelling," Walker explained to Collider. "Why is he punching this way in this moment in this story? It's not as if the narrative of a thriller stops, action happens, and the narrative picks up. We have to learn something about who's throwing the punch, who's getting punched, and he really kind of ingrained that in me."