Sam Neill

• 1. A Name Chosen at School

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  Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor, did not start out as Sam. At school he found that several other boys were named Nigel, and he decided the name sounded "a little effete for... a New Zealand playground". So he dropped it. The shorter name stuck. It later appeared above the title on films and television series made in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States. He is regarded as an international leading man and as one of the most versatile actors of his generation. This documentary asks how his career managed to cross so many borders. It asks what drew him back to the far south of New Zealand. And it asks what an actor does when serious illness arrives in the middle of a working life.

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• 2. Roots and Rehearsals

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  Omagh, in Northern Ireland, is where Sam Neill was born on the 14th of September 1947. His mother, Priscilla Beatrice Ingham, was English. His father, Dermot Neill, was a New Zealander serving in Northern Ireland as an officer with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. That mixed parentage left Neill with three documented nationalities: New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

  The Neill name had reached New Zealand long before he did. In 1863 his great-grandfather Percival, known as Percy, settled in Dunedin after four years with a firm of merchants in Melbourne. Percy was the son of a wine merchant who imported wine from France. The family later owned Neill and Co., which became part of the listed hospitality group Wilson Neill.

  In 1954 the Neills settled in Cashmere, a suburb of Christchurch. The young Neill attended Cashmere Primary School and then Medbury School, a private prep school. After a year, his parents and younger sister Juliet moved south to Dunedin, his father's home city. They lived at Macandrew Bay, where the children could roam free in the holidays. From 1961 he attended Christ's College, an Anglican boys' school in Christchurch.

  At the University of Canterbury, Neill ruled out following his father into the army or the family firm. He considered law instead, and wasted a year when he failed all four of his law units. Theatre gave him a new direction. He played Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Ngaio Marsh for the Canterbury University Drama Society. Then came Marat/Sade, by Mervyn Thompson. When another actor dropped out of a Wellington season, Neill replaced him as Jacques Roux at Downstage Theatre. He loved the experience. In Wellington he saw that drama and the arts were "part of the fabric of the city", unlike in Christchurch or Dunedin.

  In 2004 the Australian interviewer Andrew Denton briefly raised Neill's stuttering on the talk show Enough Rope. Neill recalled how deeply it had affected his life. He often found himself "hoping that people wouldn't talk to him", so that he would not have to answer them. He added, "I kind of outgrew it but you can still detect me as a stammerer."

  Neill moved from Canterbury to Victoria University of Wellington to finish his Bachelor of Arts. A philosophy unit stood in his way, and he passed the "logic" paper with last-minute coaching from John Clarke. He played Macbeth in a university production directed by Phillip Mann. Then he joined Downstage as a professional, earning $25 per week plus whatever food the kitchen had left over from the meal served to the audience before each show.

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• 3. Crossing the Tasman

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  The City of No, a New Zealand television film from 1971, was Neill's first film. A short called The Water Cycle followed in 1972, and the television film Hunt's Duffer in 1973.

  In 1974 Neill wrote and directed Telephone Etiquette for the New Zealand National Film Unit. The following year he appeared in Landfall.

  Sleeping Dogs, released in 1977, was his breakthrough in New Zealand. It became the first local film to be widely screened overseas.

  Australia came next. Neill took a guest role on the television show The Sullivans. Then, in 1979, he became the romantic male lead in My Brilliant Career, opposite Judy Davis. The film was a big international success.

  Other Australian films were seen by fewer people. These included The Journalist and Just Out of Reach, both from 1979, and Attack Force Z from 1981. He also worked in Australian television productions such as Young Ramsay and Lucinda Brayford.

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• 4. International Leading Man

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  Damien Thorn, the son of the devil, was the part that gave Neill his first big international role, in Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981. That same year he took a main role in Possession, a cult film by Andrzej Żuławski.

  The 1982 film of Ivanhoe turned Neill into a local celebrity in Sweden. The channel SVT has aired it every New Year's Day for 40 years.

  Neill was one of the leading candidates to succeed Roger Moore as James Bond. Timothy Dalton won the part instead.

  In Britain, the 1983 miniseries Reilly, Ace of Spies brought Neill early fame and a Golden Globe nomination. He played the real-life spy Sidney Reilly. An early American starring role followed in Amerika, in 1987. There he played a senior KGB officer leading the occupation and division of a defeated United States.

  Evil Angels, released in 1988, cast Neill as Michael Chamberlain in a film about the case of Azaria Chamberlain. Outside Australia and New Zealand it was titled A Cry in the Dark. The performance won him the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

  The thriller Dead Calm arrived in 1989, and The Hunt for Red October in 1990. In the two-part La Révolution française he played the Marquis de Lafayette. Death in Brunswick reunited him with his old friend John Clarke.

  Jurassic Park, in 1993, brought him international prominence as Dr. Alan Grant. He returned to the role in Jurassic Park III in 2001 and again in Jurassic World Dominion in 2022. In 1993 he also appeared in The Piano, a New Zealand film.

  Event Horizon came in 1997, then Bicentennial Man in 1999 and the comedy The Dish in 2000. John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness belongs to the same run of leading roles.

  Neill has made only occasional returns to New Zealand films. These include Perfect Strangers in 2003, Under the Mountain in 2009 and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016. Taika Waititi directed that last one, and he would cast Neill again the following year.

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• 5. Wizards, Wolsey and Odin

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  Merlin, a 1998 miniseries drawn from the legends of King Arthur, gave Neill the title role of the wizard. The performance earned him both a Primetime Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. He played Merlin again in the sequel, Merlin's Apprentice, in 2006.

  In The Tudors he played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Neill said the job gave him six months with "a character that I found immensely intriguing". He also praised the story's "revenge and betrayal, lust and treason".

  Peaky Blinders is set in Birmingham after World War I. Neill played Chester Campbell, a sadistic, corrupt policeman who arrived to clean up the town on Churchill's orders. He appeared in the first two series, in 2013 and 2014.

  He played Emerson Hauser in the short-lived Fox series Alcatraz in 2012. In 2015 he was General MacArthur in And Then There Were None, based on the Agatha Christie thriller. He lent his voice to The Simpsons in 1994 and to Rick and Morty in 2019.

  In Thor: Ragnarok, in 2017, Waititi gave Neill a scene as an actor playing Odin, as depicted by Anthony Hopkins. Luke Hemsworth and Matt Damon appear beside him as actors playing Thor and Loki. Neill played the same actor again in Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022. In 2018 he appeared as Mr. McGregor in Peter Rabbit, and he also voiced Tommy Brock.

  Neill has presented and narrated several documentaries. In 1995 he returned to directing with Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey by Sam Neill, which he wrote and directed with Judy Rymer. In 2001 he hosted and narrated the BBC series Space, which was titled Hyperspace in the United States. Years later came The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill, a series of six episodes. His narration of New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Narrator.

  In 2022 Neill joined the Foxtel legal drama The Twelve as Brett Colby. He was the only member of the original cast to return for series 2. On the 16th of September 2024 it was announced that the show would have a third season with Neill returning. On the 6th of December 2024 he was named a nominee for the 2025 AACTA awards for the role.

  On the 21st of June 2024 he was named in the cast of the Netflix drama Untamed. On the 15th of April 2025 his casting in Godzilla x Kong: Supernova was announced.

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• 6. Two Paddocks and Other Loyalties

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  Two Paddocks is the winery Neill owns in the Central Otago wine region of New Zealand's South Island. It has a vineyard at Gibbston and two more near Alexandra, where he lives. He admits the business runs against his hopes: "I'd like the vineyard to support me but I'm afraid it is the other way round." He calls it "a ridiculously time- and money-consuming business", yet he would not do it if it were not so satisfying and fun. He shares his farm exploits on social media, and he names his farm animals after colleagues in the film industry.

  In 1980 Neill met the actress Lisa Harrow while filming Omen III, and they have a son. He married the make-up artist Noriko Watanabe in 1989. They have one daughter together, and he adopted Watanabe's daughter from her first marriage. He separated from Watanabe in 2017. From 2018 to 2021 he dated the Australian political journalist Laura Tingle. As of 2023 he has eight grandchildren.

  A son born in Neill's early twenties was placed for adoption. The two reunited in 1994.

  Neill supports the New Zealand Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party. In 2016 he criticized the policies of New South Wales Premier Mike Baird on lockout laws and on the ban on greyhound racing. He has spoken positively of Jacinda Ardern's time as prime minister. He has belonged to the trade union Equity New Zealand since 1979.

  In 2025 Resources Minister Shane Jones called Neill "wrong and anti-Kiwi" for opposing a proposed open-cast gold mine near Cromwell. Neill supports the local advocacy group Sustainable Tarras, which has organised events against the proposal. He described the plan from Santana Mineral as "ruinous for the region".

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• 7. Titles and Trophies

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  The 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours made Neill an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services as an actor. In the 2007 New Year Honours he was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

  Knighthoods returned to the New Zealand royal honours system in 2009, and holders of that rank were offered the chance to convert. Neill declined, saying the title of Sir was "just far too grand, by far". In June 2022 he changed his mind and accepted redesignation as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

  The University of Canterbury, where he had once failed his law units, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2002.

  His other prizes include the Longford Lyell Award, the New Zealand Film Award and the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Actor. He has three Golden Globe nominations and two Primetime Emmy nominations. At the 2023 Logies he won the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor.

  In 2019 Equity New Zealand gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award. It celebrated his performance career as well as his leadership and mentoring of others in the acting industry. In 2020 he received an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, a distinction limited to 20 living people.

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• 8. Chemotherapy and a Memoir

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  In March 2023 Neill revealed that he had been undergoing chemotherapy since March 2022. The diagnosis was stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Swollen glands were first noticed during publicity for Jurassic World Dominion. He said the cancer was in remission, but that he would need monthly chemotherapy for the rest of his life.

  Neill used his year away from work to write a memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?, published in March 2023. Text Publishing in Melbourne and Michael Joseph in London released it at 400 pages. A fully revised edition with new writing appeared in 2024 at 432 pages. Booktopia placed the book among its top 10 favourite books of 2024.

  In April 2026 Neill said his chemotherapy had stopped working. He then underwent CAR T-cell therapy as part of an Australian clinical trial. A recent scan, he said, showed no cancer in his body. He now advocates for wider access to the treatment for blood cancer patients in Australia and New Zealand.

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