Sam Neill is speaking from his organic vineyard in the Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.
“I am alive and well and kicking and working,” he says. “I have been in remission for eight months now and couldn’t be happier or weller.”
Sam Neill with an early vintage.
The 75-year-old actor famous for numerous television and film credits including The Twelve and Jurassic Park was speaking after revealing his recent diagnosis with stage-three blood cancer in his autobiography Did I Ever Tell You This? published on Tuesday. He said: “It is not a book about cancer, it is a book about life.”
He starts the book: “The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying. I may have to speed this up. It gets my mind off things. This book is therefore somewhat flung together. I write in haste.”
Neill underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. At the beginning of March 2022 he flew to Los Angeles for publicity for the latest Jurassic Park movie and noticed the glands in his neck seemed to be up.
He writes: “My agent had to kill a few photographs because my neck looked lumpy. Alan Grant [his character] doesn’t have a lumpy neck, it seems.”
Sam Neill “pointing to the future”.
He flew back to Sydney to finish the television series The Twelve but on a day off went to see his GP who assured him it was due to undetected COVID-19. When the lumps got bigger he went to hospital for tests before going home to New Zealand.
“That afternoon I was at my son Tim’s house and my phone rang. It was my specialist doctor from the hospital, the haematologist, and she did not have good news. She told me it was serious – very serious, and I needed to get back to Sydney right away.”
At the start of the book he thanks his doctor and friends at St Vincent’s Hospital. “I wouldn’t have started the book without you. And I would certainly never have finished it. To all my friends who brought me a candle in those dark, dark days.”
He is certainly “working”. On Monday, Liane Moriarty arrives for a read-through of her recent bestseller. Neill tells the Herald: “It is for her latest book called Apples Never Fall and I am playing opposite Annette Bening which is a great pleasure.
Neill’s cow, named Helena Bonham Carter after the actress, is the most accomplished clever actor imaginable and a very dear friend, he says.
“It looks like we will do a second series of The Twelve which we will do later in the year and I look forward to that though there is nothing guaranteed.”
Of Jurassic Park he says: “It wouldn’t surprise me if they do more, but I suspect we have been put out to grass. It’s been a great run.”
So, does he feel he needs to be busier or to be putting his feet up? “All of the above, I have always been productive and I love going to work and I love being with other actors. At the same time my happy place is back on the farm with my animals and producing great wine, so I am always slightly torn about where I want to be because they are both good places.
“In two or three weeks we will be starting on this year’s vintage, and we are extremely fortunate where we are as opposed to the poor people on the North Island who have experienced the cyclone and are in real trouble.”
He writes: “I have no fear of death, none whatsoever. That’s not courage; that’s just realism. I don’t particularly want to die on my own, that’s all. I am a single man and there is no one here to hold my hand, no partner to see me out.”
He says finally: “When you are in remission that is a very good place to be. Every day that you are alive is a good day, and I am having the best days of my life right now.”
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