Following the release of Taken 3, Liam Neeson said that he was planning to retire from the action thrillers that had led to his unexpected career renaissance as cinema’s favorite grizzled badass. That was six years ago, and it would be an understatement to say that the actor hasn’t exactly kept his word.
Since drawing his Bryan Mills trilogy to a close, Neeson has starred in Run All Night, The Commuter, Cold Pursuit and Honest Thief, all of which required him to run through the familiar plot and character beats that have defined the majority of his output over the last dozen years. Not only that, but the 68 year-old’s most recent action thriller The Marksman was released yesterday, he’s just wrapped Blacklight in Australia and The Ice Road is deep in post-production.
However, in a recent interview, the Academy Award nominee has once again claimed that he’s stepping away from the genre because he feels as though he’s getting a little too long in the tooth. But as mentioned above, we’ve heard him say the exact same thing before and we all know how that turned out.
“Oh, yeah. I think so. I’m 68 and a half. 69 this year. There’s a couple more I’m going to do this year hopefully, COVID allowing us, there’s a couple in the pipeline and then I think that will probably be it. Well, unless I’m on a Zimmer frame or something. I’ve just finished one in Australia and I had a fight scene with a kid, lovely, sweet actor called Taylor, and halfway through the fight I looked up, I was breathless and it didn’t cost him a cent, and I said, ‘Taylor, what age are you?’. He said, ’25’. I said, ‘That’s the age of my eldest son!’.”
Liam Neeson admitting that he’s got another couple of projects in the works indicates that his grand swansong won’t be coming for a few years yet, and by that time he’ll be well into his 70s. Then again, Sylvester Stallone is over five years older and still keeps churning action pics out on a regular basis, but maybe this time he really means it.
Unless of course he’s drawn back into the world of Star Wars, after revealing that he’d be more than happy to return as Qui-Gon Jinn if the opportunity presented itself. Keep those fingers crossed.