The breadth of Omagh-born Neill’s work was extraordinary. Any festival celebrating his work would last for weeks Sam Neill Jurassic Park in 1993. Photograph: Murray Close/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images Mon Jul 13 2026 - 10:59 • 4 MIN READ“I remember Ireland, of course,” the actor Sam Neill told this newspaper five years ago. “I particularly remember county Down. We had a lovely little whitewashed cottage on the beach at a place called Tyrella. It was a coastguard house or watch house in the 1700s when I think people were smuggling things.” Neill, who has died in Australia at the age of 78, was born in Omagh, Co Tyrone, but moved to New Zealand, his father’s home country, with the family, when he was seven. Emerging in Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs from 1977 – the first 35mm feature shot in New Zealand – he rapidly developed a reputation as an intelligent performer who trod the line between character work and lead roles. [ Sam ‌Neill, Irish-New Zealand actor, dies aged 78Opens in new window ]Neil was unforgettable opposite Judy Davis in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career from 1979. He was harrowed in Andrzej Zulawski’s now-celebrated horror Possession from 1981. His intelligent performance as palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park helped that film become the highest-grossing of all time in 1993. Neill remained frantically busy for the rest of his career, a performer who, though capable of menace or aloofness when required – he was brilliant as Holly Hunter’s puritanical fiance in Jane Campion’s Oscar-laden The Piano – will be well remembered for a personal warmth that shone through in conversation. “I’ve never had a proper job,” he said in that Irish Times interview in 2021. “One of those pieces of advice you hear people giving young people is to find something you really love and you’ll never have to do a day’s work in your life. That’s why they advisedly call plays plays.” Neill’s father, who was of Ulster descent, moved the family back to Christchurch in 1954, before relocating to his home city of Dunedin in the south of New Zealand. Born as Nigel, Neill began calling himself “Sam” as he felt his real forename was “a little effete for ... a New Zealand playground”. He attended the University of Canterbury for a spell, but found it difficult to settle upon a future career until a few successful performances in the college’s drama society showed him the way. Despite a persistent stutter, he found work with the Downstage Theatre in Wellington. In later years, he was a supporter of Australian Speak Easy Association and the British Stammering Association. Neill’s easy-going charisma and versatility were immediately in demand across Australasia. Sleeping Dogs, a political thriller, gathered strong reviews in the United States. But he did not become a full-time actor until he was 30. A breakthrough came with Anderson’s My Brilliant Career in 1979. Derived from a novel by Miles Franklin, the acclaimed film starred Davis as a writer making her way in Australia at the turn of the 20th century. It was immediately clear that Neill, who plays the heroine’s early love, had a future in international cinema. On his first trip to Europe he shared a plane with David Niven and noticed how civil the great English actor was to all those who approached. “I thought, that’s a lesson, right?” Neill later said. “That you treat people with proper civility even when you don’t feel like it. He was wonderful.” Actor and wine grower Sam Neill on his Alex Paddocks property near Alexandra in New Zealand. Photograph: Ross Land/Getty Images What really interested Neill was film work and that required travel. The international career kicked off with The Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981 and, the same year, he starred opposite Isabelle Adjani as a spy caught up in supernatural mayhem in Zulawski’s disturbing, Berlin-set Possession. That film, though initially received with some coolness, eventually became one of the most celebrated horrors of its era. [ The remarkable life of Sam Neill, from Omagh to Jurassic Park - in picturesOpens in new window ]“Zulawski was a genius but he was also a crazy motherf***er,” Neill told this newspaper. “I was told Isabelle had a breakdown after we finished shooting. And I’m not surprised.” It seems that gentle exterior was no facade.. All who worked with him had good things to say. In 1989, he appeared opposite a young Nicole Kidman in the Australian thriller Dead Calm. “Sam was perhaps the most gentlemanly actor ​I ever encountered,” Kidman said. “Level-headed and sincere in a show business world of crazy egos. His word was his contract.” The breadth of Neill’s work was extraordinary. He was in mainstream horrors and independent art films. In the first decade of the new century, he came to Ireland to play Cardinal Wolsey in the TV series The Tudors. In 2022, he returned to the role of Alan Grant for the blockbusting Jurassic World Dominion. Such was his connection to the audience that one felt reintroduced to the oldest and most engaging of friends. Any vaguely comprehensive festival celebrating Neill’s work would last for weeks and provide endless underdiscussed treasures. Neill had a son with the actor Lisa Harrow, and was married to make-up artist Noriko Watanabe, with whom he had a daughter, from 1989 until 2017. A great friend to New Zealand, Neill lived in Alexandra on the South Island. When not shooting in remote climes, he ran a farm and operated a winery called Two Paddocks. “What is it with Irish sheep?” he pondered. “They care not for traffic or boundaries or road safety. They’re feral, lawless animals. They’re not like sheep anywhere else.” [ Sam Neill: ‘I’m not having Jimmy Nesbitt turned into sausages’Opens in new window ]Neil was diagnosed with stage three angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in 2022, but was free from cancer at the time of his unanticipated death (indeed this writer was looking forward to interviewing him in connection with the 10th anniversary of Taika Waititi’s beloved film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople). “The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free,” a statement from his family read. “More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.” They don’t make actors like Neill any more. One of the great gentlemen. David Niven would have approved.IN THIS SECTION