Liam Neeson had a premonition his father had died while he was starting out in Hollywood when a little red bird flew into his apartment.

The Irish actor's dad had kept birds when Neeson was young and the odd encounter with the bird brought memories of his father flooding back - an hour before the Schindler's List star discovered he had died.

Recalling the moment during a recent interview for U.S. show Inside the Actors Studio, Neeson says, "There was this little apartment in Venice Beach. I woke up one morning and there was this red-breasted bird sitting on the ledge looking in to the room and this bird came in, it flew around about three times, landed on the window ledge again, looking out.

"As I got up to go over and close the window, it flew away. I went back to bed and I started thinking about my father. Like, really thinking about my father because he kept canaries and so forth. About an hour later, I got a call (that) he (father) had died.

"There's a legend: if a bird comes into your house it's a sign of death or a birth, and my sister Bernadette, she had a similar experience with a pigeon that had broken a leg; she started thinking about our father too."