As a bonafide action movie star, Liam Neeson has killed his fair share of bad guys, but the actor was embarrassed about his kill count in Taken.

Is there anything more embarrassing than killing loads of bad guys after they kidnap your daughter? Not the kind of question that runs through the mind of most people on a daily basis. When you’re Liam Neeson though, the topic of kill counts becomes a far more relevant discussion point, as the actor recalls being embarrassed about the number of foes he takes down in 2008 thriller movie Taken.

The unbelievable box-office success and popularity of Taken made it one of the best action movies of the 21st Century, and sent Neeson on a very different trajectory in his career, from serious dramatic actor, to bonafide action hero. Even now, at the age of 69, Neeson is still kicking it with the best of them in the genre, with his new movie Memory being released at the end of April.

In an interview with ScreenRant, Neeson reflected on his time shooting the original Taken movie back in 2007, and in particular got to thinking about the amount of bad guys his character actually took down.

“I had a driver when I was doing Taken, and we were shooting in LA for the first week, and at the end of the week, my driver, as he dropped me off at the hotel says, ‘I’ve started to read the script of Taken, I’ve got to page 40. It says you’ve taken the lives of 26 people.’ I didn’t know how to answer that,” Neeson recalls.

“I felt quite embarrassed. They said in such a way as if, ‘Are you sure you’ve read this script? Because you do nasty things to people,’” the actor added.

Sure, Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills, inflicts some pretty gruesome damage on the criminals he encounters, but that’s all part of the fun for this kind of thriller movie.

It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Liam. You did what you had to do. Plus, you know, it was all fictional, so it doesn’t actually make you a bad person.