Actor Liam Neeson said he was offered the chance to play James Bond back in the 1990s, but he turned it down when his wife gave him an “ultimatum.”

The 70-year-old actor recalled how producer Barbara Broccoli reached out to him several times regarding the role just after Neeson was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Oskar Schindler in “Schindler’s List” (1993). But the Hollywood star explained how love trumped career in this case.

“I know the Broccolis. They looked at a bunch of actors,” Neeson told Rolling Stone during an interview published on February 20. 

“‘Schindler’s List’ had come out and Barbara [Broccoli] had called me a couple of times to ask if I was interested, and I said, ‘Yes, I would be interested.’ And then my lovely wife [Natasha Richardson], God rest her soul, said to me while we were shooting ‘Nell’ down in the Carolinas, ‘Liam, I want to tell you something: If you play James Bond, we’re not getting married.’”

The actor said he would tease Richardson by “going behind her back, making my fingers as though I’m holding a gun, and [humming the James Bond theme].” 

“I loved doing that s***!” he said about poking fun at his wife, who died in 2009 due to a head injury while skiing.

“She gave me a James Bond ultimatum,” Neeson recalled of turning down the part. “And she meant it! Come on, there’s all those gorgeous girls in various countries getting into bed and getting out of bed. I’m sure a lot of her decision-making was based on that!”

Though the actor never took a turn portraying Bond, he did make a name for himself in the action series “Taken,” which brought Neeson a huge amount of recognition in the genre.

In the movie, Neeson threatens his daughter’s kidnappers by saying, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

The actor recently discussed how he initially found his well-known speech in the 2008 film “corny.”

“I certainly did sound scary, but I thought it was corny,” Neeson told Vanity Fair during a February interview. “It was a cornball. I really did feel that. It’s nice to be proven wrong.”

The speech has become one of the most quoted in recent movie history. 

The family of civil rights activist Malcolm X announced Tuesday, the 58th anniversary of his death, that they plan to file a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against federal and state government agencies for allegedly covering up evidence related to his assassination in 1965.

Malcolm X was shot and killed while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965. Nearly 60 years later, two of his daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz and Qubilah Shabazz, along with their attorneys Ben Crump and Ray Hamlin, said during a press conference on Tuesday they were seeking “justice” for the revolutionary and will name the city of New York, the state of New York, the NYPD, FBI, and the CIA as defendants.

“For years our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder, and we’d like our father to receive the justice that he deserves,” Shabazz said. “The truth about the circumstances leading to the death of our father is important – not only to his family but to many followers, many admirers … And it is our hope that litigation of this case will finally provide some unanswered questions. We want justice served for our father.”

In January 2022, the New York Times reported Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam were wrongfully convicted of killing Malcolm X and were later awarded $36 million by New York late last year after filing lawsuits against the state after serving over two decades in prison.

Lawyers for Malcolm X’s family argue Aziz and Islam are also entitled to compensation.

A New York City Law Department spokesman said in October 2022 that the settlement “brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure.”

“Based on our review, this office stands by the opinion of former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who stated, based on his investigation, that ‘there is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime,'” he added.

Shabazz said, per The Associated Press, that the agencies “conspired with each other and with other individuals and acted, and failed to act, in such a way as to bring about the wrongful death of Malcolm X.”

Crump, who has been involved in some of the most controversial cases involving police in recent history, said, according to an ABC report, “if the government compensated the two gentlemen that were wrongfully convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X with tens of millions of dollars, then what is to be the compensation for the daughters who suffered the most from the assassination of Malcolm X?”

Crump told The Associated Press that family members and lawyers of Malcolm X allege government agencies conspired to assassinate the civil rights leader.

“They infiltrated many civil rights organizations,” he said.