Sam Neill death: Jurassic Park and Peaky Blinders actor dies as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leads tributes

According to the actor himself, Neill – who appeared in a variety of horrors during his career – named the 1981 cult film Possession as “the most extreme”, declaring: “I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact.”

The film follows the relationship between an international spy (Neill) and his wife (Isabelle Adjani), who starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking for a divorce.

“He asked of us things I wouldn’t and couldn’t go to now,” he said of Polish director Andrzej Żuławski.

Colin Trevorrow, who directed Sam Neill in 2022 film Jurassic World: Dominion, called the actor “a friend and collaborator at a challenging time”.

“His strength gave us all strength. I’ll remember him for his tranquility, his love of wine, and for the calm assuredness he brought to his characters.”

A Sam Neill film that not nearly enough people talk about is Wim Wenders’ 1991 science-fiction epic Until the End of the World.

The film, set at the turn of the millennium in the shadow of a world-changing catastrophe, follows a man and woman as they are pursued across the globe, in a plot involving a device that can record visual experiences and visualise dreams.

Sam Neill displayed mischievous charm when The Independent interviewed him in 2020 during lockdown. Read the full piece here:

When Sam Neill was cast as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, the character was supposed to be American.

But on the first day of shooting, Neill, who had spent a month perfecting the accent, was instructed by Spielberg to ditch it in favour of his own New Zealand voice.

“He came up to me halfway through the day and he said, ‘Hey, Sam, you know the accent we were talking about?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been working on it for four weeks.…’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just use your own voice,’” Neill told Vanity Fair.

“I said, ‘That’s great, Steven, thank you so much.’ And then four days later, he came up to me and said, ‘You know that voice you’re using now?’ I said, ‘Yeah, my voice?’ He said, ‘Somewhere in between.’

“It’s an actor’s nightmare!” Neill said. “So that’s why I get a lot of flak to this day: Sam Neill’s American accent in Jurassic Park was a load of T-rex poo.”

As well as being a film star, Sam Neill owned a farm and vineyard called Two Paddocks in Central Otago, New Zealand – and its residents were named after fellow famous people.

He had pigs called Angelica Huston and Imogen Poots, a rooster named Michael Fassbender and his cow was called Helena Bonham Carter.

He also renamed his bull Graham Norton after initially crowning him James Nesbitt, and named his sheep Susan Sarandon and one of his chickens Meryl Streep.

For the amusement of his half a million X/Twitter followers, Sam Neill enjoyed “making an idiot of myself on social media” during the pandemic.

He regularly posted kooky videos, which saw him playing “Uptown Funk” on the ukulele, painting “post-postmodernist” portraits of Stephen Fry, reading Dr Seuss stories, making spoof movie trailers, setting his garden gnome up on a date and showing off his fridge magnet collection;

“People need a bit of cheering up, you know? They’re sort of miserable,” Neill told The Independent in 2020.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led the tributes for the Jurassic Park actor.

“Sam Neill starred in so many beloved Australian stories and he earned a special place in Australian hearts,” he wrote on X/Twitter.

“Wry and dry, thoughtful and laconic, Sam fought illness with the same dignity, humour and conviction that gave strength to his every performance.

“He will be much mourned and long remembered. May he rest in peace.”

After being diagnosed with cancer in 2022, Sam Neill declared he wasn’t “afraid to die” – but said it would “annoy him”.

“Because I’d really like another decade or two, you know?” the New Zealand actor told The Guardian.

“We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature. And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big.”