SAM NEILL
(14 September 1947 – 13 July 2026)
The Northern Ireland-born actor Sam Neill, famous for his appearances in Jurassic Park, The Piano, My Brilliant Career, Dead Calm and Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, has died from a rare form of blood cancer. Despite his often scouring bad looks, he was a popular performer and immensely loved by all who worked with him. Mainly cast in serious screenplays he was never without a sense of humour in everything he essayed. Although he enjoyed acting, mainly because he was good at it, he never found the public spotlight to be the beginning and end all of a successful life as he diversified into other pursuits such as farming, wine-making and a natural concern for the environment and ecology.
Sam Neill was born Nigel John Dermot Neill in Omagh, County Tyrone, where his parents worked for the army. His mother, Priscilla Ingham, was English, his father, Dermot Neill, was from New Zealand, to where the family moved in 1954. Sam was educated at boarding school there and went on to the Universities at Canterbury and Victoria. He graduated with a BA in English Literature and then worked for the New Zealand Players and other touring theatre groups as well as taking up film directing, editing and scriptwriting for the New Zealand National Film Unit. His first full-length theatrical film was Landfall (1975), which was actually intended for television, followed in 1977 by Roger Donaldson’s political thriller Sleeping Dogs with Warren Oates, his first ‘local’ film to be shown overseas. He then moved to Australia where his big break arrived in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979) playing opposite Judy Davis in a story about a young woman growing up in late 19th-century Australia. It was a great success around the world, winning Judy Davis several accolades, including a Bafta for best actress.
Before moving to Hollywood, Sam Neill made several more Australian movies and then appeared as Damian Thorn in The Final Conflict, the last in The Omen trilogy where Damen is now an adult. Next came Andrzej Zukawski’s Possession, a psychological spy horror drama, with Isabelle Adjani. Neill was even considered for the part of James Bond after Roger Moore moved on, but the role went to Timothy Dalton. However, Neill was not disappointed and continued working on films and in TV in a variety of heroic and villainous roles. One he particularly liked was Reilly, Ace of Spies, a series made in the UK. Then came Dead Calm, Philip Noyce’s thriller with Nicole Kidman. The road to success continued with The Hunt for Red October with Sean Connery, and then of course as the palaeontologist Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993, in Jurassic Park III (2001) and in Jurassic World Dominion (2022). These films really made Neill’s career and he went on to further success with Stephen Sommers' The Jungle Book, Event Horizon, a sci-fi subject from Paul W.S. Anderson, and Chris Columbus' Bicentennial Man, a particular favourite of Neill’s because he worked alongside Robin Williams. Back in New Zealand he appeared in Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning The Piano (1993) in which he played Alisdair Stewart, the arranged husband of Holly Hunter, with Harvey Keitel and Anna Paquin in support. More recently, he returned Down Under to star in the comedy Rams, a remake of the 2015 Icelandic film.
On television he played a welter of different roles including Merlin, for which he won nominations for an Emmy and a Golden Globe. He portrayed Thomas Wolsey in The Tudors and joined the cast of Peaky Blinders in its first two series. Although he never stopped acting for long, Sam Neill pursued his other interests with great passion. He was no mean farmer and kept pigs and other animals which he named after actors he had worked with. He was a very successful wine producer at his Two Paddocks winery and even impressed himself with a very acceptable Pinot Noir followed by another good wine which he sent to a political opponent (who had dubbed Neill a champagne socialist). Neill labelled the bottle ‘Chardonnay Socialist’.
In his personal life he had fathered a son in his twenties and had the boy adopted, but they were re-united in 1994. He also had a son by the actress Lisa Harrow, whom he had met on the set of The Final Conflict. He later married the make-up artist Noriko Watanabe in 1989 and they had a daughter, Elena, but separated in 2017 after which Neill dated the journalist Laura Tingle. Sam Neill led a great life about which he was very enthusiastic but he also enjoyed the other things that were quite remote from show business. He is an actor to be remembered for his dramatic and comedic skills and as a man who realised there was more to life than just show business. In 1991 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
MICHAEL DARVELL