"I walked the streets with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by a 'black bastard' so that I could kill him."
Liam Neeson has admitted in an interview that he once wanted to "kill" a person he referred to as a "black bastard" in an act of revenge in the past.
Speaking to The Independent, the Antrim actor said that he once walked the streets with a cosh for days looking to kill a “black bastard” after someone close to him was raped many years ago.
While doing an interview as part of a press junket for his new film Cold Pursuit, Neeson brought up the incident, which he says he now feels "ashamed" of.
Neeson said:
"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 'black bastard' would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could, kill him.
"It took me a week, maybe a week and a half, to go through that. She (the person close to Neeson) would say, ‘Where are you going?’ and I would say, ‘I’m just going out for a walk.’ You know? ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘No no, nothing’s wrong.’"
Recognising the severity of what he was saying, Neeson then said: "It was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that. And I’ve never admitted that, and I’m saying it to a journalist. God forbid."
"Holy shit," was all his co-star, Tom Bateman, could say about the whole thing.
Neeson added: "But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the fuck are you doing,’ you know?"
You can read the interview in full
here.
Neeson has not made any public statement since the publication of the interview, which has sparked a great deal of controversy on social media.
