Liam Neeson Announces Retirement From Action Films

Liam Neeson is officially hanging up his combat clothes, with the actor announcing in a new interview that he is retiring from action films.

Neeson dropped the news at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, explaining he feels due to his age, it’s time for him to stop chasing bad guys on screen.

“The thrillers, that was all a pure accident,” Neeson told the Associated Press, via Fox News. “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.’”

Neeson has previously expressed how surprised he was by the success of 2008’s Taken, which propelled him to action-star status and spawned a franchise. Since then, Neeson has starred in nearly a dozen action films, including The Grey, Run All Night and Non-Stop. The three films alone in the Taken franchise have grossed $929.5 million worldwide.

The actor currently has two more thrillers set to be released in 2018 — Hard Powder, in which he plays a snowplow driver who faces off with drug dealers, and The Commuter — but Neeson said those will be his last.

“I’ve shot one that’s going to come out in January sometime. There might be another. That’s it,” he said. “But not ‘Taken,’ none of that franchise stuff.”

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com, EUROPACORP / Magali Bragar