Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park, Event Horizon and The Hunt for Red October, among so much more, has “suddenly and unexpectedly” died at the age of 78. Neill, who had very recently fully recovered from cancer, was surrounded by family in Sydney, Australia when he passed on Monday, July 13.
It feels reductive to describe an actor this prolific and splendid as “Jurassic Park‘s Sam Neill,” but there’s no questioning this is the franchise for which he’s best remembered, not least because of his grounding, humanizing portrayal of paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant. Spielberg’s original 1993 classic saw Grant journey from awkward kid-phobe to pseudo-family man, boosted by Neill’s character sharing the audience’s wide-eyed delight and excitement at encountering living dinosaurs. Goldblum may have been the stand-out star, but Neill was the intelligence and heart, reprising the role two more times in Jurassic Park III and, much more recently, 2022’s Jurassic Park: Dominion. He also played Grant in the first two Jurassic World Evolution management sim games.
What made Neill special is that he offered an equally grounding performance in almost everything else he appeared in, even the truly dreadful, like 1997’s Event Horizon or, as sprang straight to my mind, the 2008 TV series Crusoe. That enormously expensive flop was suddenly like an all-time classic period drama every time it flashed back to Neill’s portrayal of Jeremiah Blackthorn. He was just good, perhaps never more so than in 2016’s extraordinary Taika Waititi film Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
It seems that Neill’s goodness extended from his acting to the real world, with so many wonderful anecdotes and memories about the man appearing since the sad announcement early Monday morning.
A 2020 post from X is being re-shared today in which someone wrote, “For the Sci-Fi Horror film ‘Event Horizon‘ Sam Neill requested that the Australian flag on his character’s uniform remove the Union Flag from the corner & for it to be replaced with the Aboriginal flag, the way he thought it should look in 2047.” Sam Neill quote-tweeted this, adding, “This is indeed so. And I wouldn’t do it any differently today.”
This is indeed so. And I wouldn't do it any differently today . https://t.co/sz1guYVlM1
— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) September 2, 2020
The ‘Tom Reagan’s Hat’ account on BlueSky shared a quote from a Hollywood Reporter interview in which Neill talks about how he interpreted Dr. Alan Grant’s character and his response to seeing a living dinosaur for the first time. He told Steven Spielberg, “Look, after a lifetime of imagining dinosaurs, to actually see a dinosaur, Alan Grant might just flat out faint.” Spielberg agreed. Neill told the interviewer, “So that’s why you see me stagger around and I have to sit down and put my head between my legs. I thought, that’s actually a human reaction, so I’m glad he was open to that.”
Neill had a farm in New Zealand, his home country, for over a decade. Two Paddocks is mostly vineyard, but also has many animals which, as he revealed during an interview on the Graham Norton Show, he frequently names after celebrities, primarily to stop himself from being willing to slaughter them.
Neill also spoke very powerfully about living with depression and impostor syndrome.
And there’s so much more.
Rest in peace.
