The actor recalled when he admitted something to a priest at 15 and was told, “Stop that evil practice!”

Jen Juneau is a News and Movies Staff Writer at PEOPLE. She started at the brand in 2016 and has more than 15 years’ professional writing experience.

Actor Liam Neeson attends the "Concussion" New York premiere at AMC Loews Lincoln Square on December 16, 2015 in New York City

PHOTO: JIM SPELLMAN/WIREIMAGE

Liam Neeson is sharing why his religious confessional days are behind him.

In a clip from Monday’s episode of the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend shared by Entertainment Weekly, the 71-year-old actor, who grew up Catholic, recalled being an altar boy in Ireland, when an African missionary priest visited his church and “it was like a big deal” to go to confession with him.

But the then-15-year-old Neeson soon learned that maybe honesty wasn’t the best policy.

As he explained to host Conan O’Brien, “So we start, and I had learned how to pleasure myself at home, under the sheets, right? I had looked up the appropriate word. I remember that … ‘Masturbate’? ‘Masturbation’? Okay. That seems harmless enough.”

But when he admitted it, the priest said, ” ‘You what?!’ “

“This guy — literally, I mean, he almost said things like, ‘The grass will grow over the palm of your hand before you’re 21! Stop that evil practice!’ ” Neeson recalled.

Liam Neeson arrives at the UK premiere of "Marlowe" at Vue West End on March 16, 2023 in London, England

Liam Neeson.

“He’s shouting this!” Neeson continued, noting that there were older women just outside the confessional, praying on their knees, as he was being yelled at. “They can hear everything.”

“That was the last time I ever went,” added the Taken actor, to which O’Brien, 60, responded matter-of-factly after a laugh, “I think that’ll do it.”

Neeson, whose newest movie Retribution is in theaters now, previously admitted in an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this year that, to this day, sex scenes are not his favorite thing to film.

“I’ll be honest, when I see a sex scene, I just can’t look at them,” he said. “I just get embarrassed. I know they are choreographed and stuff, but I don’t need to see that.”

Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson.

In his newest film, Neeson plays a man who is confronted by a mysterious stranger via cell phone who says they have placed a bomb underneath his car seat.

A synopsis for the movie describes Retribution as “an immersive ticking clock thriller that straps audiences in for a high-octane ride of redemption and revenge.”