Liam Neeson is known for transitioning into action movies late in his career, and now he’s paying the price. Friends say that Neeson will undergo shoulder surgery soon, as a direct result of doing his own stunts.
Neeson’s shoulder surgery may be an investment in his action career, since he announced his retirement in September but then quickly rescinded it.
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“The thrillers, that was all a pure accident,” Neeson told the Associated Press, early in September. “They’re still throwing serious money at me to do that stuff. I’m like, ‘Guy’s I’m sixty-f—ing-five.’ Audiences are eventually going to go, ‘Come on.’”
However, a couple of weeks later, at the premier for Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, Neeson was already laughing at his remarks.
“It’s not true, look at me!” he said. “You’re talking in the past tense. I’m going to be doing action movies until they bury me in the ground. I’m unretired.”
The surgery is reportedly just to treat normal wear-and-tear on Neeson’s shoulder. Friends say that Neeson will spend his down-time after surgery watching movies that he’s fallen behind on. There’s no new word on how the procedure will effect his retirement status, so for now we can assume that Neeson is still “unretired.”
Neeson earned his serious acting chops early on with Schindler’s List. However, the last decade and a half has seen him rise to the status of full-blown action star. He played the central villain of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins in 2005, and just a few short years after that, the iconic Taken trilogy began.
