Iconic Liam Neeson Line Recited at Him During Jury Duty—’People Applauded’

Liam Neeson was subjected to a recitation of his Taken character’s iconic dialogue while doing jury duty in New York.

Between 2008 and 2014, the Northern Irishman portrayed former CIA operative Bryan Mills across three Taken movies, which spun off into the TV landscape in 2017 with Clive Standen assuming the role.

In the first action thriller, Bryan warns daughter Kim’s captors that his “particular set of skills” spelled bad news for them and it is a monologue that has followed Neeson around ever since.

He has now told People of the time he wasn’t selected to sit for a jury in a criminal trial, but when the courthouse clerk excused him, people nearby couldn’t contain the movie fan inside them.

“He’s calling, I don’t know, 55, 60 of us. He gets to me, but all I’m hearing is, ‘I have a particular set of skills. Skills that would make me…’ And I thought, ‘Oh f*** no.’ It was actually really sweet and flattering,” said the Oscar nominee.

“As I was leaving, people started to applaud. [Taken] just seemed to have touched something in the psychic nerve of moviegoing audiences.”

In one of the movies, Mills tells Albanian sex trafficker Marko over the phone: “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.”

Previously, the Schindler’s List star told Vanity Fair that Mills’ speech was “certainly” a scary one, but he thought it looked like a bit of “a cornball” in the script.

Neeson told IndieWire he had “straight-to-video” expectations for the movie.

“A short little European thriller, it might play OK for a couple weeks in France and then it will go straight to video. But Fox took it and they very cleverly did a good trailer and put it during various sporting events around the country and they made it a real success,” he recalled.

“I remember the first weekend it came in at No. 3, and then it came up to No. 2 and then No. 1, and then it went down to No. 4, and it came up to No. 3 again. It just had this extraordinary cycle.”