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Liam Neeson made a NSFW confession at church as a teenager — and a priest made sure it was his last.
“So we start, and I had learned how to pleasure myself at home, onto the sheets, right? I had looked up the appropriate word. I remember that. ‘Masturbate?’ ‘Masturbation?’ OK. That seems harmless enough I’ll say that,” Neeson, 71, recalled telling the missionary on the latest episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast. “[So I told him], ‘I got in an argument with my mom, my sister and I got in a fight and I masturbated.’”
Neeson, who was 15 at the time, detailed how the priest — who had a “booming” voice — began yelling at him in the confessional stall. “‘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 said.
The actor noted that there were “old women just outside the confessional kneeling down and saying their prayers” who could “hear everything,” which only added to the embarrassment. “That was the last time I ever went,” Neeson said with a laugh. O’Brien responded: “I think that’ll do it.”
Neeson is known for his candid storytelling. In 2014, he reflected on his relationship with ex Helen Mirren — whom he met on the set of their 1981 film, Excalibur — and the unique circumstances in which they fell in love.
“I fell in love with Helen Mirren,” Neeson told Anderson Cooper during a 2014 episode of 60 Minutes. “Oh my God. Can you imagine riding horses in shiny suits of armor, having sword fights and stuff, and you’re falling in love with Helen Mirren? It doesn’t get any better than that.”
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He once again gushed about the Oscar-winning actress in February, telling ET Canada, “Helen is a remarkable woman, a remarkable actress. I should be so lucky and be honored to have spent three or four years with that lady. She’s really something else.”
After connecting on the King Arthur project, Neeson and Mirren lived together in London for four years. During their relationship, Mirren helped Neeson obtain an agent and his career began to blossom, but the pair called it quits once Neeson needed to make a name for himself.
Liam Neeson Carlos R. Alvarez/WireImage/Getty Images
“It was difficult for him to be under my shadow,” Mirren told The New York Times Magazine in 1994. “I was well known; I had the money … [and I] had a sense from Liam that it was time for him to come out from under my wing.”
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Following their split, Mirren moved on with her current husband, director Taylor Hackford. The twosome met on the set of 1985’s White Nights and wed in 1997.
Neeson, for his part, dated Julia Roberts and Brooke Shields before tying the knot with Natasha Richardson in 1994. The pair share two children, Micheál and Daniel. In 2009, Richardson tragically died after sustaining a head injury from a skiing accident.