Liam Neeson said he hesitated when he received the phone call from Walk Among the Tombstones director Scott Frank, afraid the film might surround “another f**king phone call.”

One of the actor’s most beloved films is Taken, about a man fighting to save his abducted daughter in Paris. One of his most imitated lines — “I will find you and I will kill you” — comes from Taken during on a phone call with his daughter’s abductors.

In Walk Among the Tombstones, Neeson plays a private investigator trying to locate an abducted victim. This time, he’s looking for the kidnapped wife of a drug kingpin.

After hearing the premise of the movie, it’s understandable that Neeson, 62, would have questions about the film.

“When I first read Scott’s [Scott Frank, director-and-writer] script, I hesitated,” he admitted to Empire magazine. “Because I thought, ‘Here we go, here’s another f**king telephone call, talking to the bad guys.’ So there was this huge question mark before taking it on.”

Check out Liam Neeson as a renegade P.I. in the latest trailer of A Walk Among The Tombstones http://t.co/Zrp1NLdtoI pic.twitter.com/565oEusc8p

— ClickTheCity (@ctctweets) August 17, 2014

Neeson said it wasn’t too much of a stretch for him to slip into the character for the dark film. While the other actors had their own methods to get into that zone, all Neeson had to do was remember the loss of his wife, Natasha Richardson, who tragically died in 2009 following a skiing accident.

“I knew what was required and I can easily access that kind of darkness, you know,” he said.

#LiamNeeson takes the law into his own hands in #AmongTombstones – In Theaters 9/19. pic.twitter.com/40xG1qAGfi

— #AmongTombstones (@AmongTombstones) August 12, 2014

The actor admits that his sons, Micheál and Daniel, are just as obsessed with Taken as the rest of the world.

“I have recorded a special voicemail [with Taken quotes] so many times for my kids!” he told Australian radio hosts Kyle and Jackie O. “And they have to prompt me on the lines, because I forgot them, which is a little embarrassing!”

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