When The Big Man Liam Neeson made Taken, a film about a retired CIA-agent who carved a wrathful path through Paris in search of his kidnapped daughter, he had modest hopes for it.

“I thought it would make its money back and disappear into DVD land,” rumbles Liam, who said he only accepted the gig because it was a chance to work with its writer, Luc Besson, a filmmaker he admired, and it meant spending three months in Paris.

“Not too shabby,” he grins.

After reasonable success in France, it was a huge hit in Korea. Then it leaked onto the internet and Liam thought it was all over before it’d had a chance in the UK or US.

“My nephews in Ireland and England were calling me up and saying ‘we saw your movie’ and I said ‘Which one?’ and they said ‘Uh, Taken?’.

I said ‘You can’t have, it hasn’t opened yet.’ ‘It’s on the computer’. I remember thinking ‘Pffft, that’s the end of that, it’s finished’.

“But Fox Studios in America did a phenomenal PR job, showing little 30 second teaser trailers at these big sporting events, Superbowl, big basketball events, baseball events, and it came out and had this extraordinary success. They really hyped it, you know?’

Not only did Taken rake in nearly 10 times what it cost to make but it turned Liam, a powerful character actor with roles in Schindler’s List, Michael Collins and Kinsey to his credit, into a credible gun-toting action star at the age of 56.

It was an image exploited in films that followed including Hannibal Smith in the A-Team and a wolf-killing hunter in The Grey.

Now Liam is back for more as former-agent Bryan Mills in Taken 2.

This time it’s he and his ex-wife who are abducted by the vengeful family of the Albanian thugs he killed in the first.

And even though he reached the age of eligibility for a bus pass this year, Liam, a former amateur boxer, relished the chance to start throwing a few punches.

“Well, 60 is the new 40,” he says.

“It’s a chance to do all this physical stuff, which I love.

“I keep pretty fit as a rule. You have to these days.

“There were a few more push-ups and sit ups in the morning and a considerable amount of fight choreography. Every day after we wrapped we’d go back to the hotel and we’d work on our fights.”

Age may not have lessened his enthusiasm but he admits he doesn’t bounce off a fist with the vigour that he used to.

“It starts to hurt. The knees creak a bit more.

“But it’s good to use that – by the end of the film we can show two people getting tired. It’s not superhero stuff, it’s ugly.”

In Taken 2 the action has relocated to Istanbul where Bryan has invited his ex, Lenore (Famke Janssen), and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who has hopes of getting her parents back together, to join him.

However, they are soon being terrorised by revenge-hungry Albanians and it is Kim’s turn to help rescue her father before he can save Lenore.

The narrow streets of the Turkish city proved a fascinating place to film. They also – Liam reveals – added an extra frisson of danger as the stunt team choreographed car chases and fights while the locals went about their daily lives.

“A lot of the streets we shot in were thousands of years old and as wide as this room, with shops on either side and merchants selling their wares.

“You’re doing a car chase at 60mph, with merchants going ‘No, no, no. I’m not closing. You do your movie, I sell my wares’. You never knew who was going to pop out of a shop.”

Fortunately none of the merchants or their customers got hurt.

“We smashed a few Mercedes,” says Liam, cheerfully.

“They got chewed up big time.”

He had initially been reluctant to do a sequel thinking that the story wouldn’t stretch to it.

“They proposed a couple of ideas two years ago, which I thought were silly. But then Luc and his writing partner came up with this scenario in Istanbul.

“It drew Famke Janssen, her character, in much more. I thought ‘Yeah, this could work’.”

However, he has already warned this could be it for him, even though the door feels as if it has been left slightly ajar for Taken 3.

“Do you think so? I don’t. I think we’re finished. That’s it.

“Mind you, I thought we were finished with the first one.

“If there needs to be a sequel, it should be based on Maggie’s character.”

Instead he is keener for another career reinvention, this time as a comic actor after cameoing in the first episode of the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant series with Warwick Davis, Life’s Too Short.

“It’s a great little skit. I thought the more serious I am, the funnier this is going to be.

“Ricky gave me a couple of timing quotes. It was interesting to learn from a comedian.

“I added a couple of things. When Warwick Davis says ‘OK, what’s the scenario? You’re a greengrocer’.

“I say ‘I was Michael Collins, Schindler, I was a Jedi, I was Zeus, for God’s sake, how can I be greengrocer?’

“And he says: ‘Well, change your accent’.”

But Liam says he is still waiting for the call from Judd Apatow or the Farrelly Brothers.

“No, and I was thinking ‘Come on, bring it on’. I would like to do it, if it was right.”