In a remarkable new interview, the actor Liam Neeson has claimed that he reacted to the rape of someone to whom he was close by loitering outside a pub for a week wanting to murder a black person.
In the interview for the Independent, Neeson says he understood the “primal” motivation his character feels. “God forbid you’ve ever had a member of your family hurt under criminal conditions,” he said, before recounting the story of a time, many years ago, when he returned from overseas to discover that a woman he knew well – he did not specify if she was a friend or a family member – had been raped.
“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” he said. “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.”
Neeson continued: “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.”
Neeson declines to name the victim and withholds details to protect their anonymity.
“It took me a week, maybe a week and a half, to go through that,” he continues. “She would say, ‘Where are you going?’ and I would say, ‘I’m just going out for a walk.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘No, no, nothing’s wrong.’”
The interviewer gives every indication that Neeson is conscious of the gravity of what he is saying. She quotes him as saying: “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.”