Liam Neeson admits he thought Taken phone scene was embarrassing

Liam Neeson has revealed that he wasn’t initially the biggest fan of his now iconic phone scene from Taken (2008).

When Neeson’s character Bryan Mills threatened the man who kidnapped his daughter Kim over the phone, it birthed the beginning of the now famous scene beginning, “I have a particular set of skills.”

The actor has reiterated on numerous occasions how he never expected the action film to have garnered the success and popularity with fans that it has, which was followed up with two sequels in 2012 and 2014.

Neeson had previously told Entertainment Weekly in 2020 that at the time of its release, he expected Taken to become a box office flop.

“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,'” he told the magazine.

“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.”

Despite his scepticism, Neeson admitted that he did enjoy shooting the Taken, and appreciated the many opportunities Taken led to.

“I had no idea that it would lead onto other films and other action scripts,” Neeson told the same publication in 2019. “They started sending me action scripts and you’d see ‘Leading man, age 37’ crossed out and ‘late 40s, early 50s’ written in instead. I feel very privileged, and a little bit guilty. I’m having fight scenes with guys half my age and I just can’t stop laughing.”