Liam Neeson Wishes He Gave Up Drinking a Long Time Ago: Wasn't a 'Good Example for My Boys' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo:Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty

Liam Neesonhasn’t looked back since giving up alcohol in 2013.

“I wish I’d done it 20 years ago,” he tells PEOPLEin a new interview. “I never got sloshed, I never gotdrunkdrunk ever, I don’t think. I don’t think my character changed much. I was a jolly drinker.”

“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,” continues theAbsolutionactor andfather of two sons, Micheál, 29, and Daniel. 28.

“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,” he continues.

Liam Neeson on the cover of PEOPLE.

Does he have more clarity now than he did when he was drinking? “I guess so,” he says. “But I know I have friends who’ve given it up and tried to give it up and it was a real struggle. I totally empathize with that.”

Neeson, who stars in the new dramaAbsolution, previouslytoldGQin 2014that he gave up drinking the year prior. He said he noticed he was imbibing more after his wife, Natasha Richardson, died at 45 from a brain hemorrhage she sufferedafter a 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 the outlet.

“I was never into spirits or liquor, hard liquor,” Neeson, who stuck to Pinot noir, toldGQ. “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.”

“I don’t like saying exactly what I do,” admits Neeson. “Because I’m so fed up seeing actors talking about what they do. It’s like, ‘Oh, shut up.’ ”

Absolutionis in theaters Nov. 1

For more on Liam Neeson, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

source: people.com