Sam Neill: A versatile actor whose roles went far beyond Jurassic Park

Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor who has died at the age of 78, will forever be most associated with the film that made him an international star: Jurassic Park.

The 1993 blockbuster dominated his filmography and sparked a series of sequels and reboots – including the recent Jurassic World series, in which he reprised his role as palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant.

But there was much more to Neill’s career than escaping Velociraptors in the visitor centre of a billionaire’s tropical island.

Across a career spanning five decades, Neill showed himself to be an actor of depth, capable of taking on a wide range of roles in films ranging from box office hits to acclaimed arthouse movies.

He became a global household name relatively late in his career. By the time Jurassic Park came out, Neill was 43 years old and already had a string of credits under his belt.

Neill was born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, where his father serving as an officer with the Royal Irish Fusiliers.

“I was born in Omagh, we lived in Armagh and my favourite place here was Tyrella beach, I sort of think that’s where I grew up,” Neill told the BBC in 2012.

The family relocated to New Zealand when Neill was seven.

His real name was Nigel, but he began calling himself Sam after finding his new school already had several boys with his name. He later joked that “being christened Nigel set me back for years”.

He was not initially sure what kind of career to pursue. Neill decided not to follow his father into the army, or the hospitality business his family owned.

A brief attempt at a career in the legal profession was cut short after he failed his first year at law school.

Having starred in student productions of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Neill instead embarked on an acting career.

Various film and TV series in New Zealand followed, with his breakout role in his home country coming in 1977 with an appearance in Sleeping Dogs, before Neill moved to Australia and began to land bigger parts.

He credited 1979’s My Brilliant Career as “a most important role for me, because that’s the film that took me out of New Zealand, and allowed me to live and work in Australia, which I love”.

“Yeah, that was probably more transformative than anything else I’ve done, in a way.”

Highlights from this pre-Triceratops era of his filmography include 1981’s cult horror Possession and a role opposite Meryl Streep in 1988’s A Cry in the Dark, which earned him the Australian Film Institute award for best lead actor.

One of his main breakthrough roles was filmed in the UK in the early 1980s, when he appeared as Damien Thorn, son of the devil, in the supernatural horror Omen III: The Final Conflict.

He also appeared in Jane Campion’s 1993 period drama The Piano, which received the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to win three Oscars.

But it was the release of Jurassic Park in the same year that propelled him to an elite level of worldwide fame.

Steven Spielberg’s epic was like nothing audiences had seen before. For the technology available at the time, the dinosaurs looked incredibly realistic and left viewers transfixed.

Jurassic Park went on to gross more than $970m (£720m), becoming the highest grossing film of all time – until it was dethroned by Titanic in 1997.

Speaking to the BBC at the 1993 premiere of Jurassic Park, which co-starred Richard Attenborough and Laura Dern, Neill said the way the film had been received was a “big surprise”.

His character is naturally fascinated by the dinosaur park but soon realises the reptiles are breeding, after discovering broken dinosaur eggshells and baby footprints in the jungle. The consequences are deadly.

Whether he was playing steely but likeable heroes or a chillingly menacing villains, Neill was one of the most versatile stars in the film industry and always commanded attention on screen.

His other Hollywood roles included The Hunt For Red October as Sir Sean Connery’s second in command, and Dead Calm as Nicole Kidman’s husband.

He also appeared in Perfect Strangers, Bicentennial Man, and more recently in director Taika Waititi’s 2016 breakout hit Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

The collaboration with Waititi led to Neill’s introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the director gave him a small part in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022.

He also appeared alongside Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet in Blackbird, which sparked conversation about the issue of assisted dying.

Neill returned to his roots when he was cast as a Belfast police chief in the BBC’s Peaky Blinders in 2013.

However, growing up in Northern Ireland sadly didn’t help his accent, which was affectionately mocked by some viewers.

Neill explained that his Northern Ireland accent had been “well beaten out” of him by classmates in New Zealand, and that he needed help from friends and fellow actors James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson to re-learn it for the role.

“For all those people in Northern Ireland, I say blame it on Jimmy and blame it on Liam, it’s their fault,” he joked.

In March 2022, Neill was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma – a type of blood cancer, something he said made him “take stock of things”.

Aged 75 and unable to work, he turned to writing. He told the BBC it gave him a reason to get through the day.

A year later, what he anticipated as a collection of stories became an autobiography titled Did I Ever Tell you This? It explored his career and his diagnosis – but he stressed that it wasn’t a “cancer book”.

“The last thing I want is for people to obsess about the cancer thing,” the actor said, “because I’m not really interested in cancer, I’m not really interested in anything other than living.”

Among other things, the memoir revealed that Neill once auditioned to be James Bond (the role later went to Timothy Dalton), but he claimed he did not really want the part.

His agent arranged for him to visit Pinewood Studios for the audition and insisted that he went. “I found myself out there handling a Luger or something,” he told BBC News when the book was published, “and in another simulated bed scene, feeling entirely foolish.”

He explained: “I really didn’t want to be the Bond that everyone didn’t like. If you’re a Bond you’re a celebrity forever and I’m not and never have been and never wanted to be a celebrity.

“I’m not dogged by paparazzi. I can get a coffee in the morning and no-one bothers me and I think that’s completely priceless. So, my life is my own.”

Neill accepted a knighthood from New Zealand in 2022, after previously having rejected one when titular honours were reintroduced by the New Zealand government in 2009.

He made light at the time of how his cancer diagnosis changed his decision to accept the honour.

“I said I didn’t want the title for 10 or 12 years,” he told ABC in 2023. “Then when I thought I was dying a couple of years ago, I thought, ‘Oh bugger it, I may as well go out with the title,’ so I changed my mind.”

The country he called home had good reason to be proud of him. After Neill’s death was announced, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described him as “one of the greats”.

“He started out when there was barely a film industry in this country to speak of,” he noted.

“For more than 50 years he took New Zealand stories to the world and his talents helped make our film industry into what it is today – one of our greatest cultural exports.”