The Taken actor made the announcement at the Toronto International Film Festival, according to Sky News, explaining that his age is getting in the way.
“Guys, I’m sixty-f—ing-five. Audiences are eventually going to go: ‘Come on,’ ” he told the outlet.
A dramatic actor for most of his career, Neeson became an overnight action hero with his 2008 surprise smash hit Taken, in which he played a retired C.I.A. agent forced to rescue his daughter from sex traffickers.
The film spurred two sequels, and a TV spinoff, and opened the door for other roles like Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and Run All Night. His “phone call” speech from the original Taken (below) has become one of the most memorable scenes of his career.
But he admitted to Sky News that his action star status was “a pure accident,” while noting that filmmakers are “still throwing serious money at me to do that stuff.”
Fortunately for Taken fans, Neeson has another butt-kicking role already in the can, with his upcoming film Hard Powder. In the same vein as Taken’s family-revenge theme, the new movie stars Neeson as a snowplow driver who goes after the drug dealers who killed his son.
Meanwhile, the actor is in Toronto to promote a more serious, historical drama, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. Neeson stars as Felt, otherwise known as Deep Throat, the anonymous source who helped expose the Watergate scandal.
Directed by Peter Landesman, the film also stars Diane Lane, Michael C. Hall, Josh Lucas, Tom Sizemore, Ike Barinholt and Brian d’Arcy James. It opens in theaters on Sept. 29.
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.