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.”
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.”