The New Zealand actor has been delivering cracking performances for more than 40 years. Here’s our pick of the crop
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cientists, farmers, spies, cops, priests, the devil incarnate: is there any role Sam Neill can’t play? The New Zealand actor has been delivering cracking performances for more than four decades and, after returning to screens in Untamed and the third season of The Twelve, shows no signs of slowing down. Here are his 20 all-time greatest performances.
This is the Neill performance that’ll make you think: hot damn, he could’ve made a great James Bond. In this UK TV series he plays a Russian spy who works for the Brits; he is a devil with the ladies; and he scrubs up great in a tux: tick tick tick. The show is adapted from Robin Bruce Lockhart’s 1967 book Ace of Spies, and its titular character based on Sidney Reilly, a real-life spy who was executed by the Soviets in 1925.
It couldn’t have been easy to hold your own against Sean Connery. But in John McTiernan’s deep sea blockbuster, Neill delivers a thoroughly engrossing supporting performance as Vasily Borodin, the second-in-command to Connery’s Capt Marko Ramius, a Soviet who defects to the US. Borodin is pragmatic and process-driven but embroiled in dangerously volatile circumstances.
