‘So how did you prepare for the role?’ It is one of the softest questions in film reporting, but the world got much more than it bargained for when Liam Neeson admitted to the Independent that, nearly 40 years ago, he had planned to avenge a friend who had been raped by going into black-populated areas of the city he was in, armed with a cosh, “hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him.” Luckily nothing came of it, and after a week or so, Neeson said, he thought to himself: “What the fuck are you doing?” His publicists doubtless thought the same.

There is so much to process about Neeson’s admission. Should we condemn his racism or applaud his honesty? Would he really have gone through with it? Has he spent so long playing these middle-aged avenger roles that he can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction? And, as a secondary consideration, will Neeson’s career survive this?

Starting with the racism question. Nobody who goes out wanting to kill a stranger based solely on the colour of their skin can deny they’re racist. Or at least that they were racist. In the initial interview, Neeson said his first questions to the friend who survived the rape were “Did she know who it was?” and “What colour were they?”

Neeson later clarified in a Good Morning America interview that he had asked more questions, and that he would have had the same reaction whatever the rapist’s ethnicity. “If she’d said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian, I know it would have had the same effect.” How important is that distinction? Is it more reassuring to know that Neeson was an equal-opportunities entitled bigot?

As an actor, Neeson’s attitudes towards race and justice are uncontroversially positive in many aspects. His last high-profile movie, Steve McQueen’s Widows, began with a quietly radical shot of Neeson in bed with black actor Viola Davis. “He’s not my slave owner. I’m not a prostitute. It’s not trying to make any social or political statements. We’re simply a couple in love,” as Davis put it. Neeson’s velvety growl and calm gravitas have marked him out for roles requiring nobility, from the Jew-saving Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, to goodly Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to God-surrogate Aslan the lion in the Narnia movies.

Neeson in Schindler’s List. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX

Then again, there are the Taken movies, which often operate on the level of casual xenophobia and violent extra-judicial revenge. In the first Taken, Neeson’s daughter is abducted by Albanian sex traffickers, who attempt to auction her to Arab clients. In its sequel, he takes on the Albanians in lawless Istanbul. Time and again in his late career, Neeson has indulged these uncomplicated action fantasies, in the tradition of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish or Dirty Harry or 24. The movie he was promoting, Cold Pursuit, is another one: he plays a snowplough driver single-handedly picking off the killers of his son.

Neeson characterised his real-life revenge impulse as a product of growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, where violent sectarian revenge was part of many people’s existence. He spoke of having friends who were caught up in the Troubles, who died on hunger strike. He told the Guardian in 2014 that he had experienced a form of racial profiling himself: as an Irishman he was regularly pulled aside on flights to Britain in the 1970s. His later life was also marked by personal tragedy: his wife and mother of his two children, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident in 2009, aged 45.

Just as Neeson’s character in Taken announces to his enemies that he has “a very particular set of skills” acquired over a very long career, so this combination of public loss, statesmanlike gravitas and rugged action persona has made Neeson a unique public figure – one who is unafraid to deviate from the interview script and say something shockingly honest.

He didn’t have to make those comments. Nobody would have known about this had he not volunteered the information, and his existence would be a lot more comfortable now. He is clearly a person who has examined his conscience. He revealed he also talked to a priest after his abortive revenge mission. Perhaps talking to the press was an extension of the confession process.

Or did Neeson make a calculation that his reputation would survive this? In industry terms, there is little doubt that it will. Many middle-aged actors have attempted to emulate Neeson’s latter-day action hero formula but he is the brand original. The movies are barely distinguishable and often preposterous.

In The Grey, for example, he battles a wolf with pieces of broken bottle taped to his hands like claws. And they often turn a tidy profit: the three Taken movies alone have generated almost $1bn in worldwide box office. It was only a year ago Neeson was widely criticised for describing investigations of past sexual harassment in Hollywood as a “witch hunt”. Neeson’s fans are unlikely to turn against him now, and the industry certainly isn’t.

Neeson performing in The Grey. Photograph: Allstar/Open Road Films/Sportsphoto

The point Neeson was trying to make with his comments – which understandably got lost in the mayhem – is that life is not like the movies. Revenge is not a solution to anything in the real world, and the movies he makes do a better job of providing that cathartic release.

On a societal level, we can be pretty certain there are countless people, especially white men, who once thought like Neeson, and countless more who still do now. Particularly in the US, the current climate has created conditions where bigotry can be expressed openly, in the form of torch-carrying marches through Charlottesville, or anonymously, in online hate sites and chatrooms. As well as expressing hateful opinions, it has also become more permissible to act on them.

“We all pretend we’re kind of politically correct,” Neeson told Good Morning America presenter Robin Roberts. “Sometimes you just scratch the surface and you discover this racism and bigotry.” Neeson’s crime was to drop the pretence.

Does admitting to past racist thoughts make you a racist? I’d argue having current racist thoughts makes you one. Expressing horror at one’s past racism is potentially a route to something constructive and reconciliatory.