From 2008’s Taken to 2018’s The Commuter, Liam Neeson has been Hollywood’s go-to action star for the past two decades, but the Oscar-nominated actor’s run as an action movie star is now coming to an end. In a new interview with People, Neeson, 72, revealed his plans to retire from action movies in the near future, citing his age and the physical demands of the roles.
“I’m 72 — it has to stop at some stage,” Neeson told the publication. “You can’t fool audiences. I don’t want Mark [Vanselow] to be fighting my fight scenes for me.”
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Neeson hasn’t set an exact date for his retirement just yet, but he said that he could retire his “particular set of skills” in the genre as soon as 2025. On the timeframe of his retirement, he told the outlet, “maybe the end of next year. I think that’s it.”
Following breakout roles in movies like Michael Collins and Schindler’s List, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor at 41, Neeson made the transition to action films in 2008’s Taken when he was already 56. The film, in which Neeson’s former CIA operative Bryan Mills must rescue his kidnapped daughter – catapulted his career in a new direction. Neeson went on to star in not only two Taken sequels — 2012’s Taken 2 and 2014’s Taken 3 — but also dozens of other action films, such as 2011’s Unknown, 2012’s The Grey, 2018’s The Commuter, and 2021’s the The Ice Road, among numerous others. He told Rolling Stone last year that he even almost took on the role of 007 in a James Bond film, but ultimately turned it down.
His next film, the action thriller Absolution, is set to hit theaters on Nov. 1. The Boston-set crime drama stars Neeson as an aging gangster who “attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past, but the criminal underworld won’t loosen their grip willingly,” per the film’s synopsis. Neeson also recently wrapped filming on a reboot of the police comedy The Naked Gun, per Deadline, and earlier this year was cast opposite Zachary Levi in the action-thriller Hotel Tehran. He is also set to star in the action-thriller Mongoose, in which he will lead police on an epic televised cross-country car chase.
