Liam Neeson Retiring From the Action Genre After This Year, Maybe
Liam Neeson is a fantastic dramatic actor, best known for Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated performances in films like Schindler’s List and Kinsey, as well as Les Miserables and many more. But for over the last decade, he has been seen most often in action flicks like the Taken trilogy, The Grey, Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Run All Night, The Commuter, Cold Pursuit, Honest Thief, and this year’s The Marksman. But the actor, who will turn 69 this June, may be slowing down. Maybe.
In a recent interview with ET, Neeson was asked if he was looking to wrap up his action film career. He said:
"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.'" Neeson laughs, "I said, 'That's the age of my eldest son!'"
As for whether or not we will see Neeson reprise his role of Qui-Gon Jinn in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series that is heading to Disney+ at some point, the actor said last year that he is really not interested in returning to that role or even the genre.
But the actor isn’t shying away from work, and I would take his words with a grain of salt, as he has said as much a few times over the years. He probably just assumes that the work will stop coming in for a man his age, but his future line-up doesn’t look that way. His IMDb page lists 10 film projects that are in various stages of production or development that all fall under some mixture of Action, Drama, and/or Thriller. So I don’t see him slowing down anytime soon. And that’s fine with me. Liam Neeson is a great actor, and his movies are reliable and fun to watch. So keep up the good work, Mr. Neeson!