Liam Neeson Thought Taken's Iconic Line Was "Cornball"

The 2008 movie Taken was a huge movie for Liam Neeson's career, in part because of how much audiences responded to its simple premise, and his grounded performance. Its popularity was notable by box office standards, grossing over $220 million at the global box office on a $25 million budget, but the meme status that Neeson's "very particular set of skills" phone call scene quickly achieved. This moment was already huge for audiences just from the trailer, but the film's popularity upon release solidified it. For the Academy Award nominated actor though, that scene was one he wasn't expecting to work at all while on set.

"I was very surprised by Taken..I thought it was going to be a straight-to-video film. It was such a simple story," Neeson said in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. When asked about the phone call scene, Neeson added, "I certainly did sound scary, but I thought it was corny. It was a cornball. I really did feel that. It's nice to be proven wrong."

The success of the first Taken movie not only kickstarted Liam Neeson's career in a new way, resulting in him starring in multiple action-thrillers (and retiring from the genre...twice) but also starting a near-billion dollar action franchise. Taken 2 would be released four years later and would go on to gross over $377 million at the worldwide box office. Three years later Taken 3 was released, bringing in another $327 million. All told, the three movies made over $930 million globally. Though one might expect this to trigger a fourth movie, it didn't, instead a prequel TV series was released and ran for two seasons.

With his action-thriller days seemingly behind him (having starred in at least 12 other films in the genre outside of the Taken movies), Neeson may start a whole new path for his career soon by starring in a comedy. It was previously reported that the actor was attached to a reboot of The Naked Gun and it seems more and more likely that the film will get made. In the same interview Neeson had this to say on the movie, "It's not a done deal...but Seth MacFarlane is working on the script and Akiva Schaffer is the writer, director. So we'll see. Doing comedy will be the end of my career or it will take another level. We'll see."