Liam Neeson thought iconic ‘Taken’ speech was ‘corny’

It took some convincing for Liam Neeson to come around to his iconic speech from “Taken.”

In the hit 2008 film, the Irish actor’s character vows to stop at nothing to save his daughter from a kidnapping in Paris.

As he confronts his daughter’s snatcher over the phone, Neeson’s monologue became to be one of the most quoted lines in recent movie history.

But the actor was not initially on board with the speech.

“I certainly did sound scary, but I thought it was corny,” Neeson told Vanity Fair. “It was a cornball. I really did feel that. It’s nice to be proven wrong.”

In his iconic speech, Neeson’s character Bryan Mills assertively says, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career.

“Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

The film went on to be a huge success and became a trilogy, with “Taken 2” and “Taken 3” released in 2012 and 2014, respectively.

Speaking in 2020, Neeson told Entertainment Weekly that he thought the film was a guaranteed box office bomb.

“I thought, ‘Well, this is going to go straight-to-video. A short little European thriller, it might play okay for a couple weeks in France and then it will go straight-to-video,’” Neeson told the outlet.

“But Fox took it and they very cleverly did a good trailer and put it during various sporting events around the country and they made it a real success. I remember the first weekend it came in at No. 3, and then it came up to No. 2 and then No. 1, and then it went down to No. 4, and it came up to No. 3 again. It just had this extraordinary cycle.” 

But unfortunately for fans of the thriller-loving actor, Neeson announced his retirement from the action movie genre in 2021; and it looks like Neeson won’t be dabbling in talk show appearances either if his recent experience as a guest on “The View” is anything to go by.

The 70-year-old described his appearance on the ABC talk show last week as “embarrassing,” telling Rolling Stone the entire segment left him feeling “uncomfortable.”

During his time on the show, co-host Joy Behar couldn’t help but air out her longtime crush on the actor, but things took a turn when a montage of clips showing Behar making bizarre on-air comments about Neeson played in the background.

“I just wasn’t impressed,” he added.