by Liam Neeson has certain skills, but talking about women seems to be something he occasionally fails to do.
The ‘Taken’ star – who was stunned by the idea of taking a pay cut so that a female co-lead could get a raise – explained Rolling Stone in an interview published Monday why he turned down the role of James Bond in 1995’s “GoldenEye.”
Neeson told the magazine he was “offered” the role along with numerous other actors. But when he mentioned this to his late wife, Natasha Richardson, with whom he was 15 (WHO died in 2009 after a skiing accident on Mont Tremblant in Quebec), Neeson said she gave him a “James Bond ultimatum.”
“My dear wife, God rest her soul, she said to me when we were filming ‘Nell’ down in the Carolinas, ‘Liam, I want to tell you something, if you play James Bond, we’re not getting married.’ So I teased her by going behind her back and making my fingers look like I was holding a gun and then [hums the James Bond theme]. I loved doing that shit! [Laughs]”
Which is admittedly very cute. But things took a strange turn when Neeson explained why he thought his late wife didn’t want him to play the iconic role.
“She gave me a James Bond ultimatum. And she meant it! Come on there are all these gorgeous girls in different countries going to bed and waking up. I’m sure a lot of her decisions were based on that!” he added, laughing.
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Neeson and Richardson appeared to have a very happy relationship — and he’s kept her memory alive with lots of sweet anecdotes about their time together.
In a 2016 episode of Sirius XM’s “My Favorite Song,” Neeson revealed that Richardson had serenaded him at her 1994 wedding to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.”
“Behind my back, Natasha took singing lessons to sing it to me,” he said. “After the ceremony we all went in to start the night’s celebrations and she grabbed the mic and sang that to me. I thought, ‘Wow.’”
The “Marlowe” star was also very open about the grief he was experiencing after her sudden death.
“In our New York residency, there are periods now when I hear the door open, especially for the first few years…every time I hear the door open, I still think I’m hearing her.” hear,” Neeson told Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes” in 2014.
Later, in his Rolling Stone interview, Neeson admitted that when asked about how he survived after Richardson’s death, he “didn’t know how to answer.”
“Life goes on. Natascha’s mother Vanessa [Redgrave]and her sister [Joely Richardson] Art moved in, and I had a wonderful assistant, Joanna,” he told the magazine. “People just came to help, you know? On a grand scale. And I will never forget that.”
