Sam Neill once said he “overcame the ordinariness of his appearance” to become a movie star, yet there was nothing ordinary about this beloved actor, dad and grandad who spread joy whenever he could.
Nicole Kidman called him “charming, kind, funny and intelligent”. Russell Crowe remembered him as “wise, impish, graceful and warm”. Toni Collette described him as a “hero, legend and sweetheart”.
Sam was all those things and more, and the outpouring of grief over his unexpected death last week is a testament to the huge legacy he leaves behind, not just in film, but in life.
TRIBUTES POUR IN
The much-loved star of Jurassic Park, The Dish and The Piano was born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand. But he also called Australia home and died in Sydney last week at 78, “surrounded by family”.
His death came as a profound shock to his many friends and fans, who all thought Sam had been given a second chance after emerging cancer-free following a five-year battle with the disease.
“When I spoke to him not long ago, he was cancer-free and really happy and excited about life, so this is just devastating,” an emotional Magda Szubanski, who is being treated for a rare form of cancer, said of her “darling Sam”.
In the end, Sam passed from pneumonia, his family sharing their heartache at his “sudden” and “unexpected” death.
His former partner, ABC star reporter Laura Tingle, who dated Sam for three years – before he was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in 2022 – says his “poor old body just sort of got a bit exhausted”.
HE ‘COULDN’T RECOVER’
Just three months ago, Sam announced he’d beaten his deadly cancer after undergoing expensive CAR T-cell therapy, and his family said they were “blessed by the fact Sam remained cancer-free”.
Laura explained, “He’s been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks, and everybody who loved him has been willing him on from near and far, but I think it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time.
“He’d had a lot of chemo… [it]left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system.”
Laura, 65, and Sam remained close friends even after they split in 2021. She says he loved the challenge of acting and had to overcome moving from Northern Ireland to New Zealand as a shy seven-year-old boy with a stutter to become an international superstar who starred in 100 films.
Best known for his iconic role as palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise, Sam revealed the “bullying” he received at boarding school helped mould him into an actor.
“I learned how to perform as something else,” he told Australian Story. “I was in the shadows quite a bit, probably observing what other people were doing, how they act… how they behave towards each other, and I think that was a very formative experience for me.”
AN ACTING GREAT
For a devastatingly handsome actor whose legendary charm left women swooning, Sam was also incredibly humble. He became one of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men, picking up three Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations along the way, after making his debut in Sleeping Dogs in 1977.
The big career breakthrough came seven years after Sam fathered a son named Andrew, who was placed for adoption, with the pair only reuniting 25 years later when they both went looking for each other.
Andrew is the eldest of Sam’s four children. He also has a son, Tim, with former partner of 11 years Lisa Harrow, and two daughters with ex-wife, makeup artist Noriko Watanabe. They welcomed daughter Elena in 1991, and Sam also adopted Noriko’s daughter, Maiko.
Sam was also a proud and devoted grandfather to eight, and one great-grandchild, at times sharing sweet moments with his grandsons Nahlo and Felix, and twin granddaughters Molly and Poppy.
When he released his 2023 memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?, the usually private actor revealed he had a rare blood cancer, but that he wasn’t
afraid of dying.
LIVED FOR HIS FAMILY
However, he did say it would “annoy” him, because he wanted to live long enough to try the chardonnay he was starting to produce at his famed Two Paddocks Winery in New Zealand’s Central Otago, which is renowned for its pinot noir.
Sam, who joked he might never have made it in Hollywood if he hadn’t changed his name from Nigel when he was 12, also desperately wanted to stick around to see his “lovely grandchildren” grow up.
His son Tim was surprised at just how much his “private and reserved” dad embraced social media in recent years, sharing videos of his farmyard pets that he “genuinely adored”.
That most of his pets were named after famous friends, including chooks named Sir Michael Caine, Meryl Streep, and lifelong best friend and frequent co-star Bryan Brown, made his animal antics all that funnier. One of his cows is named Helena Bonham Carter, while a noisy rooster was dubbed Michael Fassbender.
“I tend to refer to him as my big cock,” Sam once said with a twinkle in his eye.
Sam started making his social media videos to cheer the world up during the pandemic, saying he felt a responsibility to make people feel a little less bleak.
“I’m actually in the cheering-up business,” he explained.
His dearest mate for 46 odd years since they met at a film festival in Italy, fellow actor Bryan was lucky to have a lifetime of Sam’s humour and class-act company, but even then it wasn’t enough.
“We started hanging out together and it’s never really stopped,” Sam once said of their brotherly bond.
