Liam Neeson Reveals He’s Recorded Countless ‘Taken’ Voicemail Threats for His Son’s Friends

Back in 2008, Liam Neeson stepped into a role that would change his career forever. In Taken, he played Bryan Mills, a retired CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped while on a trip to Paris. The movie didn’t just do well at the box office, it turned Neeson into an action star almost overnight. And it gave audiences one of the most quoted scenes in modern movie history.

The scene happens after his daughter is taken and Mills gets on the phone with one of the kidnappers. He doesn’t shout or panic. Instead, he calmly delivers a chilling warning: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

That single speech became a pop culture moment. It’s been parodied, turned into memes, and quoted endlessly. Neeson himself has found ways to have fun with it.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, he admitted that when Taken first came out, he didn’t know what to make of it. “I was a tiny bit embarrassed,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I did love the script. But I can’t tell you how many voicemails [of the ‘Taken’ speech] I’ve recorded for my sons’ friends.”

Even though critics weren’t exactly blown away by the film, audiences loved it. Taken made $145 million in North America and another $81.8 million around the world, bringing the total to $226.8 million. That’s a huge return for a movie that only cost $25 million to make.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it sits at 60 percent based on 178 reviews. Metacritic gives it a score of 50 out of 100. Critics called it slick and fun, but also light on brains. Audiences didn’t seem to care. The movie’s success led to two sequels and even a television series.

Now Neeson is back in the headlines promoting his newest project, a reboot of The Naked Gun. This new movie, directed by Akiva Schaffer and written by Schaffer, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand, is a follow-up to Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult from 1994. It’s the fourth film in the comedy series, but it has a fresh twist.

Neeson plays the son of Lt. Frank Drebin, who is trying to live up to his dad’s legacy while trying to stop the shutdown of Police Squad. The cast also includes Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, and Danny Huston.

The movie had its world premiere on July 28, 2025, at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. It hit theaters in the United States and the United Kingdom on August 1, 2025, with Paramount Pictures behind the release. Critics have responded positively, which means Neeson’s mix of comedy and action might be hitting the right note.

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