{"id":5246,"date":"2026-07-13T18:45:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=5246"},"modified":"2026-07-13T18:45:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:45:44","slug":"the-warning-that-got-sam-neill-his-biggest-role-but-bizarre-meryl-streep-michael-jackson-tale-made-him-shun-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=5246","title":{"rendered":"The &#8216;warning&#8217; that got Sam Neill his biggest role\u2026 but bizarre Meryl Streep &#038; Michael Jackson tale made him shun stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F6%2F2026%2F07%2Fnewspress-collage-m7spfd8z4-1783937613820.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261783923940\" \/><\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\">\n<p>NO-ONE travelled further to become an international star than Sam Neill, who died today aged 78.<\/p>\n<p>He would leave his home in the South Island of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/sport\/football\/team\/16330552\/new-zealand\/\">New Zealand<\/a> to fly thousands of miles to film sets in Britain, Europe and America \u2013 but always travel back to his far-flung base the moment they were over to spend time with his family.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682667\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Sam Neill has died aged 78<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682663\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Sam starred as Dr. Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>They <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/entertainment\/16681711\/sam-neill-jurassic-park-star-dead-cancer-free\/\" rel=\"\">confirmed his death<\/a> in a statement, writing: \u201cIt is with immense sadness that the wh\u0101nau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/sport\/football\/team\/102505\/australia\/\">Australia<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This followed a battle with stage three blood cancer after he was diagnosed in 2022. <\/p>\n<div class=\"single__inline-module inline-module inline-module--newsletter aligncenter inline-module--thesun aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-newsletter\" data-source-unit=\"Inline Newsletter Module Entertainment\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__title-wrapper\">\n<p><h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the <span class=\"newsletter-name theme-entertainment\">Entertainment<\/span> newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you!\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>After undertaking an experimental treatment announced a month ago he was in remission.<\/p>\n<p>His family said: \u201cThe loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer- free.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16681725\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>The legendary actor starred in the hit British show Peaky Blinders<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682148\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>His death comes only months after he confirmed he was cancer-free<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Sam Neill<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sam became famous thanks to his role in Omen III (The Final Conflict) where he played the antichrist who had risen to become a British politician trying to prevent the second coming of Christ.<\/p>\n<p>Before then starring in 1983 British TV series, Reilly, Ace of Spies, in which he played Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born adventurer who became a successful spy during the First World War.<\/p>\n<p>But his entry to the big-time came ten years later in Jurassic Park, directed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/who\/steven-spielberg\/\">Steven Spielberg<\/a>, which spawned a craze for everything about dinosaurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The film, about a theme park where the public could see cloned dinosaurs, caught the public\u2019s imagination \u2013 and broke box office records.<\/p>\n<p>The dinosaurs run riot in the film when all safety fences are broken, killing park workers and each other as there is a battle for supremacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Neill\u2019s lead role of dinosaur expert Dr Alan Grant escaped the carnage and went on to star in sequels, Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), making a personal fortune in the process.<\/p>\n<p>Yet he was a last minute choice after bigger star names like William Hurt, Kurt Russell, Harrison Ford and Tim Robbins all turned it down.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16681822\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>His character in Jurassic Park was a paleontologist with a particular interest in velociraptors<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16681821\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Neill in the 1981 horror flick The Omen III<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt was a warning never to become too big or too expensive,\u201d he said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can lose a lot of good parts in that way.\u00a0I preferred quiet progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Neill did precisely that throughout his career of over 100 movies in nearly 50 years, in which he would turn up in the most unlikely roles.<\/p>\n<p>It included that of Major Chester Campbell in the first two series of the BBC\u2019s hit series Peaky Blinders.<\/p>\n<p>He was born on September 14th, 1947 in Omagh, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/sport\/football\/team\/33177\/northern-ireland\/\">Northern Ireland<\/a> to New Zealander father Dermot, an army officer, and mother Priscilla, who was English.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Although he was christened Nigel, he later thought the name \u2018prissy\u2019 and changed it to Sam in childhood.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>His family continued to call him Nigel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He is survived by actor son Tim (b 1983) whom he had with actress Lisa Harrow, a fellow New Zealander.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16681731\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>The Kiwi was nominated for several awards throughout his career<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: AFP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682147\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Neill\u2019s final photo shows the actor posing with singer Kate Ceberano at the ARIA Hall of Fame awards<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: INSTAGRAM\/ @samneilltheprop<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Despite reports to the contrary, they never married.<\/p>\n<p>He also has daughter Elena (b 1991) with estranged wife Nariko Watanabe, a Japanese make-up artist whom he met on Dead Calm (1989), which was co-star Nicole Kidman\u2019s breakthrough movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He had a stepdaughter with Watanabe, Maiko Spencer (b 1982).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Neill spent virtually his entire life travelling, first with his father\u2019s job moves around Ireland and then, when he retired from the army, to New Zealand, aged seven.<\/p>\n<p>His father joined the family brewing wholesale business near far-flung Dunedin, which was Gaelic for Edinburgh and founded in 1848 as a Scottish Free Church settlement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was an outsider from the start there,\u201d he recalled.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBullying at school, mocked for my accent, being called names and beaten up \u2013 the lot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCowboy films and TV series were very popular at the time, so I called myself Sam to sound like one.\u00a0It didn\u2019t do much good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was sent away to boarding school in Christchurch, more than 200 miles north along the coast.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was even more lonely,\u201d he said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI developed a stutter, although I could talk perfectly up to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He used the experiences and memories when he became an actor, always being prepared to take on new projects wherever they were in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had an ability to pretend to be other people \u2013 probably because I had to at school,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never had any great expectations as an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He started working in television documentaries and in small acting roles.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>He was 30 before he appeared in a movie, Sleeping Dogs (1977), an action thriller made in New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682665\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Sam Neill appeared on The Graham Norton Show to discuss his upcoming projects<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: PA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682666\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Sam posed with some Jurassic Park merch in a recent Instagram post<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: instagram \/ SamNeillTheProp<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThat film was a calling card,\u201d he said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a critical success and that led to some offers, all thousands of miles away. It was a case of either travel or never leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He had arrived in London when we first met in March, 1989, promoting a film called A Cry in the Dark, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/who\/meryl-streep\/\">Meryl Streep<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was an alarming real-life Australian story about a baby girl who disappeared from a campsite.<\/p>\n<p>The baby\u2019s mother, Lindy Chamberlain (played by Streep) insisted that a wild dingo dog had taken her baby, but a disbelieving public felt that she was making up a story to cover up murder.<\/p>\n<p>Neill was playing husband Michael Chamberlain.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt revealed to me the price of being an international star, like Meryl,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was the most famous actress in the world at that point and the sort of stuff she had to put up every day was incredible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne was a story about her leaving her husband for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/who\/michael-jackson\/\">Michael Jackson<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought to myself \u2018if this is what real stardom means, I don\u2019t want it.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 So I had to be careful.\u00a0I wanted recognition, but also want privacy and sanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Neill went on to achieve exactly that.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>We met several times over the years.\u00a0He had a calm, down-to-earth manner, unfussy and unflashy, with a dry self-mocking sense of humour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have always been free of ambition \u2013 honestly,\u201d\u00a0 he said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realised, early on, that if I started to desperately want things, then I was going to be disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was always someone whose career was going to better and bigger than mine.\u00a0There was also someone going to get the parts I wanted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I never had a game plan.\u00a0If I\u2019d had one, I would have moved to Hollywood and committed to a career in films, going to endless meetings and being a \u2018personality.\u2019<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16681710\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>The actor featured in other films such as Red October (1990) and The Piano (1993)<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: Getty<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16682703\" class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-caption alignnone aligncenter\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span>Away from the film industry, Neill enjoyed wine-making as one of his hobbies<\/span> <span class=\"credit\">Credit: AFP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cInstead, I have never moved my home from New Zealand.\u00a0I\u2019ve been fortunate in that enough work has come up \u2013 and I\u2019ve travelled to do it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had to get used to the biggest jet-lag, the longest time-changes to the body and being away from home.\u00a0But that\u2019s been worth it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t forget that the first time I went to New Zealand in the early 1950\u2019s it took two months by boat and now it\u2019s only 21 hours by plane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was also cautious about being caught in the trap of other well-known actors.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what it is about us that leads us in to more temptation,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we are sometimes over-celebrated and can have far more fame than is comfortable.\u00a0So when trouble comes, it\u2019s all over the public domain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI once went to a pub\u2019 with English actor Warren Clarke, drank non-stop to keep up, blacked out and woke up in bed with a woman I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe trick is to keep your trousers on and go to bed early.\u00a0It\u2019s mostly worked for me up to now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He seemed to effortlessly glide into some major roles in films like The Hunt for Red October (1990) and The Piano (1993) and TV series The Tudors (2007), Happy Town (2010) and Alcatraz (2012).<\/p>\n<p>There was a certain irony that when playing his unrelentingly tough Northern Ireland police chief in Peaky Blinders, he couldn\u2019t master the accent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was born in Northern Ireland and had the accent as a kid, but had buried it so deep in my mind that I had the greatest difficulty digging it up again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He ended up calling his Irish friend Liam Neeson for some tips and delivered the part pitch-perfect.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI probably over-did it a bit in the end,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love working in Britain.\u00a0I feel part British, obviously, and the quality of the acting and the film crews are hard to beat anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Between each highly-paid role and movie, he would return home to New Zealand and not work, sometimes for months on end, so would simply slip out of the headlines.<\/p>\n<p>On the last occasion we met, he was more interested in talking about his own wine label in New Zealand.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>He had used the old family connection with wine to grow his own and set up a company to produce it.<\/p>\n<p>He lived, very happily he said, among wine-making and animals on a ranch in Central Otago, surrounded by mountains and lakes.<\/p>\n<p>Neill announced in his 2023 autobiography Did I Ever Tell You This? (Penguin) that he had been undergoing chemotherapy since March, 2022 for a type of blood cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He had first noticed swollen glands when travelling to promote Jurassic World Dominion. <\/p>\n<p>He had put a hold on his acting work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have been very fortunate to enjoy the best cities in the world \u2013 like London, Paris or Rome \u2013 and I have never been too jaded to get a kick out of that,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the thing that pleases me more than anything is to sit still at my home, have a quiet glass of red wine and contemplate life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NO-ONE travelled further to become an international star than Sam Neill, who died today aged 78. He would leave his home in the South Island of New Zealand to fly thousands of miles to film sets in Britain, Europe and America \u2013 but always travel back to his far-flung base the moment they were over&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/07\/newspress-collage-m7spfd8z4-1783937613820.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&1783923940&w=1920&h=1080&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}