Liam Neeson Got Sober for His Sons: ‘Isn’t a Good Example’

Published: October 28, 2024

Liam Neeson Got Sober for His Sons: ‘Isn’t a Good Example’

By Movieguide® Contributor

TAKEN actor Liam Neeson is grateful he gave up alcohol in 2013.

In a new interview with PEOPLE, Neeson said he wishes he’d “done it 20 years ago” but is grateful he is sober now.

“I never got sloshed, I never got drunk drunk ever, I don’t think. I don’t think my character changed much. I was a jolly drinker,” he said.

“But it was just getting to the stage where, [I’d] get on the telephone at 6 o’clock at night, open a bottle of wine, and after an hour the bottle was finished, just open another one,” Neeson explained.

But as a dad to two sons — Micheál, 29, and Daniel, 28 — he wanted to set a good example for them.

“It was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I just thought, ‘This isn’t a good example for my boys, so I’m just going to quietly stop. Not going to announce it. Just quietly stop.’ And I did,” Neeson said.

He told GQ in 2014 that he turned to alcohol after his wife died in a tragic skiing accident.

“I was drinking too much. It started since my wife died. It was like, so easy to just…Never at work, never would do it like that, but this time of night?…I’d be on my second bottle [of wine],” he told GQ.

“I was never into spirits or liquor, hard liquor,” he continued. “And I gave up the Guinness years ago, because it just — past an age, it sticks to you, you know? So last year, I just thought — they’ve been throwing these action movies at me, and I thought, ‘Okay, let’s just change it a little bit.’ And it’s been great. I love it.”

Since his sobriety journey began, Neeson has turned to fitness and family as his outlets when life gets hard.