GoKawiilNew Zealand actor Sam Neill, who starred as Dr. Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park and its 2022 sequel, Jurassic World Dominion, died on Monday in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.
While American audiences likely know Neill best for Jurassic Park, he had a long and varied career in film and television. His sheer versatility won him fans around the world. He played the grown Damien in Omen III: The Final Conflict; a Russian officer in The Hunt for Red October; and even made brief cameos (as an actor playing Odin in a theatrical troupe) in Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. (The less said about 1997’s space horror travesty, Event Horizon, the better, although it has its fans, and Neill made the most of his role.) Yet some of his best performances were in smaller, critically acclaimed independent films such as 1993’s Oscar-winning The Piano.
On television, Neill earned his first Golden Globe nomination for the lead role in Reilly, Ace of Spies in the 1980s. He was nominated for both an Emmy and a second Golden Globe for playing the titular Arthurian wizard in the 1998 miniseries Merlin. He played Cardinal Wolsley in The Tudors, and was part of the ensemble cast in the (excellent) 2015 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Neill was magnetic as the ruthless CI Major Chester Campbell in Peaky Blinders—an antagonist and romantic rival of Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby.
Neill was also something of an entrepreneur, owning the Two Paddocks winery in New Zealand. “I’d like the vineyard to support me, but I’m afraid it’s the other way around,” Neill told The West Australian in 2008 of his dual careers. “It’s not a very economic business. It’s ridiculously time- and money-consuming. I would not do it if it was not so satisfying.” He liked to name his farm’s livestock after friends in the film industry, Helena Bonham Carter and Taika Waititi among them.
While doing publicity for 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, Neill noticed his glands were swollen. He was diagnosed with stage 3 blood cancer and took time off from acting for chemotherapy. By this April, the chemo was no longer working, and Neill underwent CAR T-cell therapy. He was actually cancer-free when he died, according to family members, who described his passing as “sudden and unexpected.” An acting colleague told NBC News that Neill’s immune system was compromised from the cancer treatments and he’d had pneumonia shortly before his death, but no immediate cause of death has been provided.