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Footage has resurfaced showing Liam Neeson admitting in an interview that he had racially profiled fellow passengers during flights.
It follows an interview with The Independent in which the 66-year-old actor revealed he once walked the streets for days looking to kill a “black bastard” after someone close to him was raped many years ago.
The Taken star admitted he was now “ashamed” of his past “awful” behaviour.
During a press junket to promote his 2014 movie Non Stop, Neeson, sitting alongside co-star Julianne Moore, said “we all racial profile” during a discussion about the film’s plot.
“It’s a horrible thing to admit to do but we all do it. I know I do it,” he told The Guardian.
“I’m used to it because I’m a child of Northern Ireland and from 1970 onwards any flight we made over to England, I’d be travelling on my own.
“I had hair down to here, single Irish guy, always pulled over.”
He added: “I don’t think it affected me. I understood it. It wasn’t Swedish grandmothers doing all of this stuff.
Liam Neeson through the years
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“But I see now long, long lines of people and you know, some poor lady in a wheelchair that has to be escorted off because they have to put it through a machine, and it’s like come on, for f*** sake.
“Come on, a mother with a baby and a bottle of milk. Come on, use your brain cells, you know. However, it’s necessary I guess. These are the times we live in.”
Following an international furore over his comments to The Independent, Neeson insisted he was not racist and that race had not played a part in his actions.
“We all pretend we’re all politically correct,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America. “In this country, and same in my own, sometimes you scratch the surface and discover this racism and bigotry, and it’s there.”
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