Sam Neill reflected on his difficult battle with a rare form of blood cancer, saying he’s not afraid to die.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Australian Story, the 76-year-old New Zealander says death would be “annoying” but he’s “not remotely afraid.” That said, the idea of retiring from acting “fills me with horror.”
The Jurassic Park and Event Horizon star was diagnosed last year with a non-Hodgkin blood cancer (angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma). According to the Australian news outlet, his doctors tried chemotherapy, but it stopped working after three months. They then switched to a drug that requires infusions every two weeks, which has successfully put his cancer into remission but has difficult side effects. His doctors have told him that the drug will stop working at some point.
“I’m prepared for that,” Neill said. “I know I’ve got it, but I’m not really interested in it. It’s out of my control. … I started to look at my life and realized how immensely grateful I am for so much of it … I’m in a very uncertain world at the moment.”
Neill instead focuses on things like his vineyards, his garden and his grandchildren. He’s also continuing to act, filming a movie (before the writers and actors strikes shut down production) with Annette Bening titled Apples Never Fall, based on Liane Moriarty’s novel (the interview was conducted before the actors strike). And he wrote a memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?
The actor noted that every morning he’s “pleased to be awake.”
Neil got his start with starring roles in My Brilliant Career (1979) and Omen III (1981), followed by roles in Dead Calm (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Piano (1993) and, of course, as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise. In recent years, he’s had roles in Netflix’s Peaky Blinders and Rick and Morty.
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