Liam Neeson hasn’t been to confession for over 56 years after allegedly being shamed by a priest for masturbating.
The “Taken” actor explained during an appearance on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast that he made the confession when he was a teenager – to a missionary that traveled from Africa to his hometown in Northern Ireland.
“So we start, and I had learned how to pleasure myself at home, onto the sheets, right? I had looked up the appropriate word,” Neeson, now 71, recalled, pretending to look at a phone. “‘Masturbate?’ ‘Masturbation?’ OK. That seems harmless enough, I’ll say that.”
The then-15-year-old told the priest that he had gone to his room and “masturbated” one day after getting into a big fight with some of his family members.
However, he says the priest — who had a “booming” voice — began screaming at him so loud that the “old women just outside the confessional kneeling down and saying their prayers” could “hear everything.”
“‘You what?!’ This guy, literally, I mean, he almost said things like, ‘The grass will grow over the palm of your hand before you’re 21! Stop that evil practice!’ He’s shouting this!” Neeson explained.
“That was the last time I ever went,” Neeson said with a laugh, noting that by the time he left his “d—k” had “shrunk.”
Neeson, who was ironically named Liam after a local priest, has always been known for his candid storytelling.
Last year, the Irish actor admitted that he fell in love with a “taken” woman while filming “Blacklight” in Australia.
“I loved Melbourne, I loved our Australian crew,” the action star said on the Australian morning talk show “Sunrise” in February 2022. “Every department was superb but they were their own people, do you know what I mean?”
“They had a great sense of humor,” he added. “I made a couple of pals and fell in love once while I was there, but she was taken.”
However, Neeson didn’t divulge much more information into the mystery woman’s identity — or whether or not she was one of his co-stars.
Neeson has kept his love life out of the public eye ever since his late wife, Natasha Richardson, tragically died in a skiing accident in March 2009. The former couple were married from 1994 to 2009, and share two sons: Micheál, 28, and Daniel, 26.
