Sam Neill has been a well-known actor to the general public since the 1980s thanks to films such as “The Hunt for Red October”, “The Piano”, “Thor” and especially since the mid-1990s through the Jurassic Park saga. His passion for the craft has made him a respected name in the industry, with 150 titles under his belt and no intention of taking a step back in his career at the age of 76. Not even when, as it became known last March, he was suffering from a rare advanced stage of blood cancer. Now he assures in an interview that he is ready to die. But not to retire.
Neill revealed his diagnosis seven months ago in his memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, which became a huge bestseller in Australia and New Zealand. In it, he explained that a year earlier he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare cancer that affects the blood and was quite advanced. “The thing is, I’m done. Possibly dying,” he wrote at the time. But at the moment, fortunately, his self-diagnosis is not that accurate. The actor gave an interview to Australian Story media this Sunday from his ranch in New Zealand and explained that he tries to forget his illness whenever he can. “I know I have it, but I don’t care about it,” he says of his cancer. “It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, you don’t get involved,” he says, claiming that he leaves everything to the doctors and tries to think about it as little as possible, although of course he recognizes that illness occupies a large part of his thoughts. “I’m grateful to wake up every morning,” he says.
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During the conversation, the British-born actor explains that when he was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors tried to treat him with chemotherapy for three months, but it stopped working and the tumor kept growing, so they decided to stop to switch to experimental chemotherapy treatment. . It appears they did it right, and for the past year he has been in remission. But it is not final. The doctors have explained to him that the medication will no longer be effective in certain phases that have yet to be determined. His hematologists are looking for a third way to cure. “It’s difficult to wait day by day to see what happens,” he admits.
Therefore, accept what is to come. “I’m ready for that,” says the actor calmly, living happily among his animals, his Pinot Noir vineyards and his children and grandchildren on his farm in Otago’s Gibbston Valley. He is divorced from New Zealand actress, environmental activist and author Lisa Harrow, to whom he was married between 1978 and 1989 and with whom he has one son, Tim; and also the actress Noriko Watanabe, whom he met while filming “Total Calm” in 1989 and with whom he has a daughter, Elena; They separated in 2015. Now he doesn’t have a partner and admits he sometimes finds it difficult to cope with loneliness. “I had some very lonely times last year,” he says. And although he has already had a few dates, he doesn’t want to go too far: “At the moment I live in a very uncertain world. Very insecure. Nothing is guaranteed.”
He is not afraid of death, he accepted it after learning about the diagnosis. He finds it “annoying” because he still has a lot to do, but he says he is “not remotely afraid” of dying. But he doesn’t want to retire. “It scares me,” he says. Neill premiered The Twelve in 2022, a 10-part television miniseries (which he also produced), an adaptation of the Belgian film The Jury, and in 2023 he has already appeared in three films. He has a series and a film about to be released, and he is also directing and will star in another film: Apples Never Fall, based on the book by bestselling author Liane Moriarty.
Neill has to go to the hospital every two weeks for transfusions. For now, he continues the treatment indefinitely, and the consequences make him feel “dead” for a few days, with discomfort and sadness; He then spends another 10 days feeling completely alive, “breathing happily and looking at the blue sky.” Now he’s got his looks back, but after the first few months of chemotherapy he went bald “like a badly cooked hard-boiled egg,” he jokes. “It wasn’t a very pretty sight: he had neither hair nor beard,” he says; Furthermore, he has recovered from this in recent months and is able to work either as an actor or in his vineyards, which he would not be able to do with chemotherapy. “I began to look at my life and realized how infinitely grateful I am for so many things,” he says in the interview. “I started to think I had to write it down because I wasn’t sure how long I would live. “It was a race against time.” Furthermore, writing, something he could do at the time, gave him meaning and organized his life and his mind. When he was at 50,000 words, he decided to publish it. He also left something to his children and grandchildren: “I thought it would be great if they had some of my stories. I may not be here for a month or two. Let’s leave something for them.