accessing HttpContext.Request in a controller's constructor

I'm following this ASP.NET MVC tutorial from Microsoft:

My code is slightly different, where I'm trying to access HttpContext.Request.IsAuthenticated in the controller's constructor.

namespace SCE.Controllers.Application
{
    public abstract class ApplicationController : Controller
    {
        public ApplicationController()
        {
            bool usuario = HttpContext.Request.IsAuthenticated;
        }           
    }
}

The problem is that HttpContext is always null.

Is there a solution to this?