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Artist Vija Celmins and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve will be honored at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s upcoming Art + Film Gala, the first to be hosted after the spring opening of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries.

Now in its 15th year, the glitzy annual event co-hosted by Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio is set to take place Nov. 7. If the museum follows the blueprint it implemented with its Geffen Galleries opening party, the evening’s festivities will unfold in a posh tent beside the new building with a cocktail hour at the base of Peter Zumthor’s concrete creation.

With LACMA still in the international limelight, this year’s Art + Film gala is poised to be its most high-profile yet, enabling it to further its mission of creating connections between the city’s thriving arts and cinema ecosystems. Celmins and Villeneuve certainly live up to the hype. The former, 87, is a pioneer in photo-realistic paintings of natural settings and objects; the latter is an Oscar-nominated director and filmmaker whose projects include the “Dune” movies as well as the upcoming James Bond film for Amazon MGM Studios.

“This year, we are honoring two icons of visual creativity. Whether in painting, drawing, printmaking or other media, Vija Celmins’ exacting renderings of the natural world blend realism and imagination, resulting in sublimely beautiful works,” Michael Govan, LACMA’s director and chief executive, said in a news release. “Likewise, Denis Villeneuve’s meticulously crafted worlds give his films an unforgettable visual impact, from contemplative and cerebral stories to global blockbusters. It will be a privilege for LACMA to honor both of these artists and their extraordinary careers in November.”

Over the years LACMA’s Art + Film Gala has featured a high-profile list of respected artists and filmmakers, including Simone Leigh, Baz Luhrmann, Judy Baca, David Fincher, Helen Pashgian, Park Chan-wook, Amy Sherald, Kehinde Wiley, Steven Spielberg, Betye Saar, Alfonso Cuarón, Catherine Opie and Guillermo del Toro.

Last year’s event, held in honor of Mary Corse and Ryan Coogler, netted a record $6.5 million in support of the museum and its programs.

NO-ONE travelled further to become an international star than Sam Neill, who died today aged 78.

He would leave his home in the South Island of New Zealand to fly thousands of miles to film sets in Britain, Europe and America – but always travel back to his far-flung base the moment they were over to spend time with his family.

They confirmed his death in a statement, writing: “It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney, Australia.”

This followed a battle with stage three blood cancer after he was diagnosed in 2022.

After undertaking an experimental treatment announced a month ago he was in remission.

His family said: “The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer- free.”

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Sam became famous thanks to his role in Omen III (The Final Conflict) where he played the antichrist who had risen to become a British politician trying to prevent the second coming of Christ.

Before then starring in 1983 British TV series, Reilly, Ace of Spies, in which he played Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born adventurer who became a successful spy during the First World War.

But his entry to the big-time came ten years later in Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg, which spawned a craze for everything about dinosaurs. 

The film, about a theme park where the public could see cloned dinosaurs, caught the public’s imagination – and broke box office records.

The dinosaurs run riot in the film when all safety fences are broken, killing park workers and each other as there is a battle for supremacy. 

Neill’s lead role of dinosaur expert Dr Alan Grant escaped the carnage and went on to star in sequels, Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), making a personal fortune in the process.

Yet he was a last minute choice after bigger star names like William Hurt, Kurt Russell, Harrison Ford and Tim Robbins all turned it down.

“It was a warning never to become too big or too expensive,” he said. 

“You can lose a lot of good parts in that way. I preferred quiet progress.”

Neill did precisely that throughout his career of over 100 movies in nearly 50 years, in which he would turn up in the most unlikely roles.

It included that of Major Chester Campbell in the first two series of the BBC’s hit series Peaky Blinders.

He was born on September 14th, 1947 in Omagh, Northern Ireland to New Zealander father Dermot, an army officer, and mother Priscilla, who was English. 

Although he was christened Nigel, he later thought the name ‘prissy’ and changed it to Sam in childhood. 

His family continued to call him Nigel.  

He is survived by actor son Tim (b 1983) whom he had with actress Lisa Harrow, a fellow New Zealander.  

Despite reports to the contrary, they never married.

He also has daughter Elena (b 1991) with estranged wife Nariko Watanabe, a Japanese make-up artist whom he met on Dead Calm (1989), which was co-star Nicole Kidman’s breakthrough movie. 

He had a stepdaughter with Watanabe, Maiko Spencer (b 1982).  

Neill spent virtually his entire life travelling, first with his father’s job moves around Ireland and then, when he retired from the army, to New Zealand, aged seven.

His father joined the family brewing wholesale business near far-flung Dunedin, which was Gaelic for Edinburgh and founded in 1848 as a Scottish Free Church settlement.

“I was an outsider from the start there,” he recalled. 

“Bullying at school, mocked for my accent, being called names and beaten up – the lot.

“Cowboy films and TV series were very popular at the time, so I called myself Sam to sound like one. It didn’t do much good.”

He was sent away to boarding school in Christchurch, more than 200 miles north along the coast. 

“It was even more lonely,” he said. 

“I developed a stutter, although I could talk perfectly up to that point.”

He used the experiences and memories when he became an actor, always being prepared to take on new projects wherever they were in the world.

“I had an ability to pretend to be other people – probably because I had to at school,” he told me. 

“I never had any great expectations as an actor.”

He started working in television documentaries and in small acting roles.  

He was 30 before he appeared in a movie, Sleeping Dogs (1977), an action thriller made in New Zealand. 

“That film was a calling card,” he said. 

“It was a critical success and that led to some offers, all thousands of miles away. It was a case of either travel or never leave.”

He had arrived in London when we first met in March, 1989, promoting a film called A Cry in the Dark, with Meryl Streep.

It was an alarming real-life Australian story about a baby girl who disappeared from a campsite.

The baby’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain (played by Streep) insisted that a wild dingo dog had taken her baby, but a disbelieving public felt that she was making up a story to cover up murder.

Neill was playing husband Michael Chamberlain. 

“It revealed to me the price of being an international star, like Meryl,” he said.

“She was the most famous actress in the world at that point and the sort of stuff she had to put up every day was incredible. 

“One was a story about her leaving her husband for Michael Jackson!

“I thought to myself ‘if this is what real stardom means, I don’t want it.’   So I had to be careful. I wanted recognition, but also want privacy and sanity.”

Neill went on to achieve exactly that.  

We met several times over the years. He had a calm, down-to-earth manner, unfussy and unflashy, with a dry self-mocking sense of humour.

“I have always been free of ambition – honestly,”  he said.

“I realised, early on, that if I started to desperately want things, then I was going to be disappointed.

“There was always someone whose career was going to better and bigger than mine. There was also someone going to get the parts I wanted.

“So I never had a game plan. If I’d had one, I would have moved to Hollywood and committed to a career in films, going to endless meetings and being a ‘personality.’

“Instead, I have never moved my home from New Zealand. I’ve been fortunate in that enough work has come up – and I’ve travelled to do it.

“I had to get used to the biggest jet-lag, the longest time-changes to the body and being away from home. But that’s been worth it.

“Don’t forget that the first time I went to New Zealand in the early 1950’s it took two months by boat and now it’s only 21 hours by plane.”

He was also cautious about being caught in the trap of other well-known actors. 

“I don’t know what it is about us that leads us in to more temptation,” he laughed.

“I think we are sometimes over-celebrated and can have far more fame than is comfortable. So when trouble comes, it’s all over the public domain.

“I once went to a pub’ with English actor Warren Clarke, drank non-stop to keep up, blacked out and woke up in bed with a woman I didn’t know. 

“The trick is to keep your trousers on and go to bed early. It’s mostly worked for me up to now.”

He seemed to effortlessly glide into some major roles in films like The Hunt for Red October (1990) and The Piano (1993) and TV series The Tudors (2007), Happy Town (2010) and Alcatraz (2012).

There was a certain irony that when playing his unrelentingly tough Northern Ireland police chief in Peaky Blinders, he couldn’t master the accent.

“I was born in Northern Ireland and had the accent as a kid, but had buried it so deep in my mind that I had the greatest difficulty digging it up again.”

He ended up calling his Irish friend Liam Neeson for some tips and delivered the part pitch-perfect.  

“I probably over-did it a bit in the end,” he said.

“I love working in Britain. I feel part British, obviously, and the quality of the acting and the film crews are hard to beat anywhere in the world.”

Between each highly-paid role and movie, he would return home to New Zealand and not work, sometimes for months on end, so would simply slip out of the headlines.

On the last occasion we met, he was more interested in talking about his own wine label in New Zealand. 

He had used the old family connection with wine to grow his own and set up a company to produce it.

He lived, very happily he said, among wine-making and animals on a ranch in Central Otago, surrounded by mountains and lakes.

Neill announced in his 2023 autobiography Did I Ever Tell You This? (Penguin) that he had been undergoing chemotherapy since March, 2022 for a type of blood cancer. 

He had first noticed swollen glands when travelling to promote Jurassic World Dominion.

He had put a hold on his acting work. 

“I have been very fortunate to enjoy the best cities in the world – like London, Paris or Rome – and I have never been too jaded to get a kick out of that,” he said. 

“But the thing that pleases me more than anything is to sit still at my home, have a quiet glass of red wine and contemplate life.”

Actor and racing driver Michael Fassbender is returning this month as CIA Agent Martian in season two of The Agency. He talks sociopaths and obsessive preparation on set.

Leading a double life is nothing new for Michael Fassbender, who is returning as CIA agent Martian in season two of spy thriller The Agency. An actor and a professional racing driver, Michael, 49, has reached an optimum level in both careers. Yet, despite this enviable skill set, achieving success and fitting in perfectly in two very different worlds, it would not mean he would make a perfect spy.

For that, according to a real life agent, who he spoke to while researching his role, Michael would need to be a sociopath. He says of this revelation: “That was a real gateway into the character for me.”

The Agency, starring Michael as Brandon Colby, codenamed Martian; Jodie Turner-Smith as his lover Dr Samia Fatima and Richard Gere as CIA chief James Bradley, launches season 2 on Saturday June 21 on streaming service Paramount+. A dramatic trailer for the series hears Martian saying: “I betrayed my country, did I cause harm? Yes. I lied to my friends, my colleagues. I sacrificed people. I deserve my fate. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

Season one saw CIA covert operative Martian being suddenly ordered to abandon his long-term undercover assignment in Ethiopia – where he fell in love with Samia – and return to London. In Africa he was working under the false identity – known in the world of espionage as a ‘legend’ – of Paul Lewis.

Michael picks up the story in season two, saying: “Then she [Samia] arrives in London. Then he meets up with her, which he shouldn’t do and then he compromises her. She gets captured and his new objective is to basically get her to safety. But by doing that, he becomes a double agent and betrays his country, becomes a traitor and the walls are closing in on him.”

Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Michael’s mum, Adele, hailed from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, while his dad, Josef, was a chef, who had worked at The Savoy in London. Together with his older sister, Catherine, now a neuropsychologist, the family moved to Kilarney in County Kerry when he was two, where his parents ran a local restaurant, West End House.

A Catholic altar boy when he was young, Michael says this trained him to perform to an audience. And, after initially harbouring ambitions to be a heavy metal guitarist – growing his hair and listening to thrash metal – aged 17, he appeared in a local play and changed direction.

Relocating to London, aged 19, he enrolled at the Drama Centre, but dropped out before completing his third year to start his professional career in a touring production of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. Launching his film career in 2001 in Steven Spielberg’s Band of Brothers, his credits since include Hunger (2008) Shame (2011) 12 Years a Slave (2013) – for which he was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar – and X-Men (2011).

He was also nominated for a best actor Oscar for playing the Apple co-founder in the 2015 movie Steve Jobs. Married to Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, 37, the couple and their two young sons live in Lisbon, Portugal, but retain strong ties with London, where they spent many years.

Known to completely immerse himself in a role – for example, losing 40 lb to play an IRA hunger striker in Hunger – when preparing for the role of Martian, he also met up with two genuine spies. Speaking on The Arts Hour, he says: “The first guy I talked to, I felt like I wasn’t going to need dirt or negative aspects, let’s say. Then I spoke to another guy. We were going through the character and I was like ‘is this guy a sociopath?’ And he was like ‘well let’s go through the characteristics of a sociopath.’”

Clinically diagnosed as antisocial personality disorder, sociopaths have a persistent disregard for the rights, feelings and safety of others – feeling neither empathy, nor remorse. Returning to his conversation with the spy, Michael continues: “We went through the list [of characteristics] and he was like ‘we’re ticking a lot of boxes here.’ I was like ‘yes, ok, so he is.’ And he was like ‘well, it’s a good thing to be in that job.’”

In the new season of The Agency, Martian will be seen desperately trying to claw back some semblance of humanity after being out on his own, as a covert operative, for 7 years. Michael explains: “A lot of spies work in the embassy, so if the heat comes on them, they have a passport and they can get out. But a non-official covert doesn’t have that.”

Describing Martian’s relationship with Samia and with his daughter in London, who he hasn’t seen for many years, he continues: “It’s sort of his fight for humanity. He’s been in the business for about 20 years, so he’s quite jaded. He’s crossed a lot of moral lines he didn’t think he’d do at the beginning of his career.”

As for his own career, for 10 years, Michael has pursued parallel interests in racing driving and acting. Between 2019 and 2023, he stepped away from Hollywood, pursuing a serious career as a professional sports car racer. Joining a development programme with Porsche back in 2018, his greatest racing achievement has been completing the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance classic in 2022.

The 2023 documentary Road to Le Mans follows his journey. Michael has said of racing: “My first dream has always been to go racing. Even before acting.” Someone who doesn’t do anything by halves, it is unsurprising that Michael would never have been content to keep racing as a hobby. His desire to give everything his personal best applies both to racing and acting.

Reputed to have read the script for Shame around 350 times, so he could get inside the head of a sex addict, he claims to have reined in his obsessive preparation for The Agency. He laughs, saying he read the script “150 times.” He says: “I try and do it 10 times a day.”

Explaining the need for this degree of intensity, he shrugs: “I’m a slow learner! It’s just something I’ve always done. If I keep reading it, I feel like the dialogue is seeping into the bones and I’m thinking about the character as I’m reading.”

Hugely professional, Michael adds: “I just don’t want to turn up on set unprepared. A lot of things can fall through the cracks that are out of my control, but the worst thing is if I leave set and I’m ‘oh I messed up because I didn’t do my homework.’“ An anathema to the average sociopath, this sense of duty and consideration for others would probably make Michael a lousy spy.

*This interview has been adapted from The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service, available on BBC Sounds.

Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi thriller, “Disclosure Day,” topped the box office this weekend, an encouraging sign for what could be a big summer for theaters.

The film, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, brought in $44 million in the U.S. and Canada for a worldwide total of $92.9 million, according to studio estimates. The opening weekend totals beat box office analysts’ expectations of about $40 million to $50 million.

“Disclosure Day” is Spielberg’s latest alien-centric movie that charts a desperate race to show the world the truth about extraterrestrials.

The film, which had a production budget of about $115 million, was also scored by legendary composer and longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who is now 94 years old.

Spielberg described the film in April as “way closer to truth than fiction” during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas. The veteran director of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 2005’s “War of the Worlds” said at the time that he’s been curious about “what’s going on in the night” since he was a child and “been very fixated on the possibilities.”

Focus Features’ “Obsession” came in second at the box office with a domestic haul of $19 million, a continuation of the film’s strong run in theaters.

“Scary Movie,” “Backrooms” and “Masters of the Universe” rounded out the top five at the box office.

Recent box office performance — particularly with Gen Z hits “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms” — along with a slate of upcoming blockbuster franchise installments has buoyed the hopes of exhibitors and studio executives for a strong summer.

Next week, Walt Disney Co. and Pixar will release “Toy Story 5,” while Warner Bros.’ DC Studios has “Supergirl” landing in late June.

Universal Pictures and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” Disney’s live-action “Moana,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are all slated for July.

That steady cadence of new and different films is key for a healthy box office and a successful summer, said Daniel Loria, editorial director at the Box Office Co.

“We’re seeing that momentum come back on a weekend-by-weekend basis,” he said. “What we needed to get back to a healthy industry post-pandemic is consistency, and that’s the difference here in 2026.”