Liam Neeson has sparked a race row after revealing that he went out looking to kill a “black bastard” after a woman he cared about was raped.
The Oscar-nominated actor, from Ballymena in Co Antrim, made the extraordinary claims during an interview with The Independent to promote his new film Cold Pursuit, in which he plays a man seeking to avenge the murder of his son.
“There’s something primal - God forbid you’ve ever had a member of your family hurt under criminal conditions,” Neeson said, before describing his real-life bid for revenge following the attack on the unnamed woman.
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“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” Neeson told the newspaper. “But my immediate reaction was... 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 [uses air quotes with fingers] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him.”
The Hollywood star said that he finally recognised the wrongness of his actions after calming down.
He added: “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.
“It’s awful. But I did learn a lesson from it.”
Nevertheless, his revelation has been met with shock, revulsion and criticism on social media.
Many commentators were angered by Neeson’s immediate focus on the race of the attacker.
“Not how old were they? How tall were they? You just asked what colour were they? I don’t care how sorry you are, Liam Neeson, that is disgusting,” tweeted BuzzFeed reporter Hannah Al-Othman.
Although generally reserved in interviews, Neeson “has a history of surprising outbursts”, says The Irish Times. Last year, he caused outrage by describing the allegations of sexual abuse that followed the Harvey Weinstein revelations as “a bit of a witch-hunt”, during an interview for Irish TV show The Late Late Show.
Neeson has not commented on the response to his latest comments.
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