During a press junket for his upcoming movie Cold Pursuit, actor Liam Neeson revealed he once roamed the streets with an insatiable urge to kill a “black bastard” after a close friend was allegedly raped by a black man.
Neeson relayed the story to The Independent while discussing his character in Cold Pursuit, a father who seeks revenge (a Neeson specialty) after his son is killed by drug lord’s gang:
It was some time ago. Neeson had just come back from overseas to find out about the rape. “She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” Neeson says. “But my immediate reaction was…” There’s a pause. “I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person.
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some [Neeson gestures air quotes with his fingers] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could,” another pause, “kill him.”
Neeson admitted he’s disgusted by that impulse, which he said lasted for a week and a half. “It was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that,” he said.
“Holy shit,” said Neesom’s co-star, Tom Bateman.
Yeah, uh, agreed. Holy shit, dude. File this to the list of things we really didn’t need to know about Liam Neeson.
Neeson said he never shared the story of his week-long stint as a violent racist to anyone before this interview. A therapist would have likely been a better outlet for this confession.