Sam Neill

For three generations of filmgoers he was, and will always be, Dr Alan Grant. Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor who took off his sunglasses at the sight of the first brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park, died on 13 July 2026 at a Sydney hospital, aged 78, after half a century in front of the camera. His whānau, as his family called itself using the Māori word, said the loss was sudden and unexpected, but softened by one bittersweet fact: Sam remained cancer free to the end.

Though the world thought of him as the quintessential New Zealander, Nigel John Dermot Neill was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, on 14 September 1947, to an English mother and a New Zealand army officer. The family settled in Christchurch in 1954, and it was in the school playground that young Nigel decided to call himself Sam. He read English literature at the University of Canterbury and spent years directing and editing documentaries at the National Film Unit before stepping in front of the camera.

New Zealand's quiet pioneer

His first lead came in 'Sleeping Dogs' (1977), the thriller that kickstarted his country's modern film industry and the first New Zealand feature ever released in the United States, and 'My Brilliant Career' (1979), directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Judy Davis, carried him abroad. Europe welcomed him with two unforgettable films: he closed the Antichrist trilogy as Damien Thorn in The Final Conflict (1981) and played Isabelle Adjani's husband in Possession (1981), Andrzej Zulawski's cult fever dream, which won the actress the best actress prize at Cannes.

On television he conquered British audiences as the spy Sidney Reilly in 'Reilly: Ace of Spies' (1983), which brought him his first Golden Globe nomination and put him at the top of every list to inherit James Bond's tuxedo. He screen tested in the mid eighties, but the part went elsewhere, and he never seemed to mind.

1993: dinosaurs and a Palme d'Or

First came Dead Calm (1989), the nerve shredding open water thriller that launched Nicole Kidman to Hollywood with him at the helm, and The Hunt for Red October (1990), where he served as Sean Connery's first officer. But his miracle year was 1993. Steven Spielberg chose him as Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, the grumpy, child allergic palaeontologist fleeing the tyrannosaur alongside Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, and the film became the highest grossing picture in history up to that point.

Just months later came The Piano, Jane Campion's Palme d'Or winner, in which he played Holly Hunter's husband in colonial New Zealand opposite a debuting Anna Paquin. Few actors have ever fronted the biggest blockbuster in history and the toast of Cannes in the same year.

The nineties were a whirlwind: he shot the futuristic odyssey Until the End of the World (1991) and the lavish Restoration (1995), and he never turned his nose up at genre cinema: he was the novelist losing his mind in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and the captain of the cursed ship in 'Event Horizon' (1997), now a cult favourite.

Later came the vet of The Horse Whisperer (1998), the patriarch of the family that buys Robin Williams's robot in Bicentennial Man (1999) and, hat back on, the lead of Jurassic Park III (2001).

He also charmed audiences as the wizard of the hit miniseries 'Merlin' (1998), which brought him one of his Emmy nominations, and led the endearing Australian comedy 'The Dish' (2000).

Wolsey, Campbell and the streaming years

Maturity turned him into one of television's great supporting men: he was Cardinal Wolsey in The Tudors and, above all, the relentless Inspector Chester Campbell of Peaky Blinders, across the show's first two series, the great nemesis of Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby. Then came the science fiction of Invasion, the Australian courtroom drama 'The Twelve', in which he was a celebrated defence barrister, and the miniseries 'Apples Never Fall', opposite Annette Bening.

Home always pulled at him. In 2016 he starred in the delightful Hunt for the Wilderpeople, by his compatriot Taika Waititi, who also gifted him droll cameos in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). He made the rural comedy 'Rams' (2020) and the Australian western Sweet Country (2018), played Mr McGregor in Peter Rabbit (2018) and put on Alan Grant's hat one last time in Jurassic World: Dominion (2022). His final major work came with the Netflix series Untamed (2025), a thriller set in Yosemite National Park, alongside Eric Bana.

The knight of Two Paddocks

Off screen, Neill was nearly as famous for his wine as for his films. In 1993, the very year of his global breakthrough, he founded Two Paddocks, his vineyard in Central Otago that he tended for more than three decades, where he produced a well regarded pinot noir and named the farm animals after his co stars. During the pandemic he became an unexpected social media phenomenon thanks to his homemade videos, full of humour, ukulele and a contagious calm.

Honours followed him throughout his life: he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1991 and New Zealand knighted him in 2022, officially making him Sir Sam Neill. He also collected three Golden Globe nominations and two Emmy nominations across half a century of work, though he always wore the honours lightly.

In March 2022 he was diagnosed with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive blood cancer he revealed a year later in 'Did I Ever Tell You This?', a memoir written during treatment, when he feared he might be telling his last story.

When chemotherapy failed he turned to experimental therapies, the last of them CAR T cell treatment in an Australian clinical trial, and in April 2026 he happily announced he was cancer free. He worked through much of his treatment and waved away all talk of battles, preferring to speak of simply getting on with living. That is why his death, barely three months later and unrelated to the disease, came as such a shock.

He is survived by his four children, Andrew, Tim, Elena and Maiko, and eight grandchildren. Tim was born from his relationship with actress Lisa Harrow, whom he met while making 'The Final Conflict', and Elena from his marriage to Japanese make up artist Noriko Watanabe, which ended in 2017. In his later years his partner was the Australian journalist Laura Tingle.

His family said he died with the dignity that had defined his whole life, surrounded by loved ones at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, and the tributes poured in at once, from compatriots such as Karl Urban, who called him a national treasure and an inspiration, to the Australian prime minister, who remembered a man who fought illness with the same dignity, humour and conviction that gave strength to every one of his performances.

And for audiences everywhere, Sam Neill will never quite be gone: he will be there every time a palaeontologist removes his sunglasses in front of his first brachiosaurus.

The earliest credit MovieNCo has for Sam Neill is The Final Conflict (1981); in all, 39 films and 5 TV shows over 44 years. Their title most voted by MovieNCo readers is Jurassic Park (1993), with 117 votes. Their busiest decade is the 2010s, with 18 titles. The person they have worked with most is Steven Spielberg, on 4 films, among them Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III.