The 62-year old star of Taken has gone on the record to confirm his badass days may soon be a thing of the past. Liam Neeson, who has since 2008 forged a career off the back of his Bryan Mills persona, spoke out on the subject of his filmic future… and it will apparently have fewer guns and swarthy terrorists.
The Irish thesp sat down with Good Morning America (via /Film) who broached the topic of his action career, asking if it’s something he would hope to continue, to which he answered:
Maybe two more years. If God spares me and I’m healthy. But after that, I’ll stop [the action], I think. I’m in a very, career-wise, great place. [After] the success of certainly the Taken films, Hollywood seems to see me in a different light. I get sent quite a few action-oriented scripts, which is great. I’m not knocking it. It’s very flattering. But there is a limit, of course.
That limit has yet to be reached. Since Taken, Neeson firmly denied the likelihood of a sequel, which then happened anyway. After that, he put his foot down and said there absolutely would not be a Taken 3. Until there was. His position on whether or not it’s a smart move to keep rolling out the same action icon again and again, is of course, flexible.
While the Taken sequels weren’t exactly inspired stuff, his work outside of the franchise has taken a series of compelling turns. The Grey and A Walk Among The Tombstones are arguably the best of an action-centric bunch, with Non-Stop, Unknown and The Next Three Days delivering typical step-by-step retreads of his more gripping titles.
A skim over Neeson’s resume proves without doubt that the man’s got the chops to wrestle with a ton of different roles. Who knows what the future holds for him, but by the sounds of it, it’s not going to require he carry a firearm permit.