One of the most beloved actors in Hollywood, the late Sam Neill is remembered as our “honorary Aussie” with a breadth of talent.
Sam Neill knew he could make people smile. He had a knack for it.
“I’m in the cheering-up business.”
Whether it was through his vast array of movie roles, getting us all through COVID-19 lockdowns with his quirky animal videos or simply his “crazy obsession” with wine, this actor from across the ditch had so much charisma and character we claimed him as an “honorary Aussie”.
The New Zealand actor died today, aged 78.
He shocked fans when he revealed he was undergoing treatment for a rare blood cancer, angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, in his memoir Did I Ever Tell You This published in early 2023. But he urged people at the time to “please not worry”.
Neill seemed unconcerned about death. He told ABC’s Australian Story in October 2023 that it would be simply “irritating” if he died because he had so much more to do in life.
“I’m not in any way frightened of dying,” he said. “It’s never worried me from the beginning. But I would be annoyed. I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do.
“Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be boring you all to death with lots more work,” he said in a social media video in late 2023.
Best known for his iconic role as palaeontologist Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise, Neill’s film and television work is as diverse as it is long. He paved the way as one of the most versatile actors of his time.
Sam Neill and Peter Strauss in a publicity portrait for the TV series Kane & Abel, 1985. (Getty Images: CBS)
Sam Neill as Colin in Rams. (Supplied: Ian Brodie)
Judy Davis plays Sybylla opposite Sam Neill as Harry Beecham in My Brilliant Career. (Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives)
Sam Neill as Alan Grant, with Ariana Richards (left) and Joseph Mazzello (right) as Lex and Tim, in a scene from Jurassic Park. (Getty Images: Murray Close)
Teresa Palmer as Melissa Payne and Sam Neill as Paddy Payne in the 2019 film Ride Like A Girl. (Supplied)
Sam Neill in a scene from the 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness. (Getty Images: New Line Cinema)
Sam Neill as Colonel Geoffrey Brydon and Jason Scott Lee Kitty as Mogli in The Jungle Book, 1994. (Getty Images: Film Publicity Archive/United Archives)
One of Sam Neill’s final acting roles was alongside Annette Bening in the TV series Apples Never Fall. (Supplied: Peacock)
How Nigel became Sam
Sam Neill was “born on the kitchen table” at his family’s property in Omagh, Northern Ireland, on September 14, 1947, to an English-born mother, Priscilla Beatrice (Ingham), and a New Zealand-born father, Dermot Neill.
The family moved to New Zealand’s South Island in 1955, when Neill was seven, and he became known in the playground as the “shy British boy who stuttered”.
And his name was also Nigel, not Sam. He became Sam Neill because his two best mates were also called Nigel.
In his book Did I Ever Tell You This, Neill wrote: “The one thing I resent about my parents, the only thing, is that they called me Nigel. Changing my name to Sam at the age of 11 was probably the best decision I made in my life.”
On ABC’s The Assembly, which aired in 2024, Neill was asked the question: What was the best lesson you learnt from your parents?
It was a question that shook him and took him a few moments to answer as he paused to reflect on a difficult time at university.
“She [mum] looked at me and she said, ‘Well you’re just going to have to pull yourself together, aren’t you?’.
And I think that’s the best lesson I learnt from her — sometimes you have to just pull yourself together. It’s a tough lesson, but a good one.”
He told Australian Story he was “easily bullied” and survived that by “becoming a New Zealander”.
“I learned how to perform as something else. I was in the shadows quite a bit, probably observing what other people were doing, how they act, how they stand, how they behave towards each other, and I think that was a very formative experience for me.”
Neill was a boarder at Medbury and Christ College from a young age, before moving on to Canterbury University, where he joined a thriving drama club.
“I had no idea what I was going to do. I got a really moth-eaten arts degree. I had no visible talent that I was aware of. I would have liked to have been an actor but there wasn’t enough work in New Zealand,” Neill told Australian Story in 2020.
His first film role was in NZ’s first colour feature, Sleeping Dogs, before Australian producer Margaret Fink recognised something in him and cast him as the dashing lead in My Brilliant Career. And so began his string of leading roles.
‘A brother from another mother’: An enduring friendship
It was during filming of My Brilliant Career that Neill fell in love with Australia, calling it his second home for many decades. He even had two Australian Story episodes made about him.
“I never went to drama school. I’m completely untutored. I wish I’d had that opportunity,” Neill told the ABC program in 2020. “There was no drama school to go to. So, I’ve just had to learn on the job and watch good people.
“I feel I’m more in debt to Australia than Australia is to me. That completely changed my life. And I found myself in Sydney, which was the most exciting place I’d ever seen. So many good filmmakers.”
It was more than 40 years ago when Neill met actor Bryan Brown. The pair would remain close until Neill’s passing.
“Where we really met and became friends was at a film festival in Sorrento in Italy, where they showed a lot of Australian movies,” Brown told Australian Story.
“We were young fellows and that friendship started then and pretty much just continued for 40 years. He’s a lucky bloke,” he laughs.
Neill called Brown “a bit like a brother from another mother”.
“Except I got the looks and the brains, obviously,” Neill counters.
“Sam is a joy to work with: he’s well prepared, he treats his job seriously,” filmmaker and friend Mark Joffe told Australian Story in 2020. “He’s got this relaxed veneer but he does work very hard. He won’t take centre stage just for the sake of taking centre stage and that generosity permeates his work and his life.”
Neill also went on to appear in films including The Dish, Evil Angels, Rams, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, The Piano and Ride Like a Girl. He has also had several high-profile roles including as Sidney Reilly in Reilly, Ace of Spies, as adult Damien in Omen III: The Final Conflict, as Merlin in the miniseries Merlin, and as Captain Vasily Borodin in The Hunt for Red October.
Neill was a regular on the small screen in recent years, appearing in The Twelve, The Portable Door, Peaky Blinders and the series adaptation of the Liane Moriarty novel Apples Never Fall. He also narrated several programs and documentaries including Lindy Chamberlain: The True Story (2020) and The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook (2018).
In 2019, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts celebrated his lifetime of achievements by presenting him with the Longford Lyell Award.
Neill’s big family
Neill leaves behind a large family — four children and eight grandchildren included. To them, he was “Grad”.
Neill’s kids were raised completely out of the limelight and most did not follow their famous father’s footsteps into the film industry.
In 1981, he won his first big international role, as Damien Thorn, son of the devil, in Omen III: The Final Conflict and it was there he met his first wife, Lisa Harrow.
They went on to have their son, Tim. He would go on to work in the camera and electrical department for big-name movies such as The Matrix Reloaded and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Neill and his second wife Noriko Watanabe, whom he wed in 1989, had one daughter together, Elena. Neill also adopted Watanabe’s daughter from her first marriage, Maiko. The pair separated in 2017.
Neill went on to date ABC journalist Laura Tingle before becoming a bachelor for several years.
He became a grandfather for the first time in 2021.
Neill’s ‘double life’ at the vineyard
Neill managed to live a double life — one on film sets and at Hollywood premieres, the other on his beloved vineyards in New Zealand’s south island. His grapes were organically grown and fermented into his favourite variety of wine, pinot noir.
Neill came from a long line of fifth-generation wine and spirit merchants. He planted his first vines in 1993 and by 1997 had his first harvest for his company Two Paddocks. This is what he’d put his work into when he wasn’t filming movies or television shows.
“I love my professional working life as an actor, as part of an arts community, but I equally love my life as part of the winemaking community, of part of an agricultural community, as being part of the cycle of nature,” he told Australian Story in 2020.
In the tiny town of Clyde, in Central Otago, New Zealand, Neill was just another one of the locals, cruising into town to grab a coffee and some lunch.
He said Hollywood was never his thing.
“I’ve never worked to be a celebrity,” he said. “Life’s much more simple not being a celebrity. I don’t see the attraction in it. What’s in it for you?”
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His son Tim said Neill was happiest when he was back at the vineyard.
“I think it’s his legacy come full circle and what started as a ‘what if’ is now very much a concrete massive part of his life. I’d hazard to say that acting comes second to his winemaking now to him,” he told Australian Story in 2020.
Neill would often post about his menagerie of animals on his wildly popular Twitter and Instagram accounts — chickens Nicole Kidman, Magda Szubanski and Helena Bonham Carter — and his favourite duck, Charlie Pickering.
During the COVID lockdown, aged in his early 70s, Neill went viral on social media, proving to be a shining light during difficult times.
“I just do all sorts of silly stuff that entertains me. I put it on social media. And if someone else who is also isolated and fearful and anxious gets some kind of enjoyment out of it, then it’s worth doing,” he said in his 2020 Australian Story episode.
While self-isolating in Australia and NZ, Neill channelled his creativity into a series of hilarious comedy skits featuring some of his A-list friends, cheekily titled Cinema Quarantine. DAS BAD was perhaps the most memorable which featured himself seemingly sharing a bath with English-Australian actor Hugo Weaving, 60.
“I’m hopeless on the ukulele. I can’t paint for nuts. I certainly can’t write poetry, but I’m giving them all a go and it’s doing me a lot of good and I’m feeling so much more cheerful for it.
“I realise I’m actually in the cheering up business, not just making wine, but I’ve now got a responsibility to cheer people up on social media because it’s such a miserable place. How did I get there, I don’t know.”
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In 2023, Neill told ABC’s The Weekly host Pickering — of Charlie the duck fame — that he wrote his memoir to get him through cancer treatment.
“It was a compulsion really, I was suddenly told I was desperately ill, I was having chemo and didn’t have anything better to do. So I thought I’d write to stop myself going crazy and it worked.”
‘I like the idea of service’
At age 76, Neill said the idea of retirement “filled him with dread”.
“I never would have imagined that I’d still be working, but I don’t seem to be stopping.
“I go to work, what’s on today? You know, what scenes are we doing? Who am I working with today? I am absolutely fortunate. I’m really blessed.
“As an actor, you’re there to serve, you’re there to serve the script, you’re there to serve the director, you’re there to serve the story. And I like the idea of service.”
In late 2023, Neill returned in season 2 of the television series, The Twelve, and the following year appeared in the television adaptation of the novel The Apples Never Fall.
It came months after he reprised his role as Dr Grant in Jurassic Park Dominion. Neill kept a close bond with the original Jurassic Park cast, all these years, often posting videos and photos with Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern on social media.
Aside from his impressive acting resume, Neill had a number of honours outside of the industry. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1991 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services as an actor. At the 2007 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He was given the title of “Sir” in NZ and awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Canterbury in 2002.
Before his death, Neill summed up what being diagnosed with cancer taught him.
“One of the things I’ve learnt, which I probably knew already, is how important it is to live in the moment,” he told Australian Story in early 2023.
“I’m not an introspective person. I don’t look back with any great eagerness, but I was forced to look back and take an evaluation of my life.
“I think I’ve done some good things. I’ve done some good things. Not all of them have been good. We all have regrets, but, I think I can live with myself and I can die by myself OK. Gee, how’d I get to that.”
