Sam Neill
Sam Neill
Nigel John Dermot Neill DCNZM OBE, known professionally as Sam Neill, is a Northern Irish–born New Zealand actor who first achieved leading roles in films such as Omen III: The Final Conflict and Dead Calm and on television in Reilly, Ace of Spies. He won a broad international audience in 1993 for his roles as Alisdair Stewart in The Piano and Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, a role he reprised in 2001's Jurassic Park III. Neill also had notable...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth14 September 1947
CityOmagh, Ireland
CountryIreland
The animatronics now are certainly more lifelike than before. They've advanced in exactly the same was as the CGI has. It is all really out of my area of expertise, but it definitely made my job a lot easier to act to something that was a lot more expressive, more real.
I don't think I really have the insight or the inquiring to be an astronomer, and I don't think I have the wherewithal to be an astronaut. But if I had to choose which one I'd like to be, it would be the astronaut. I think it would be a wonderful thing to try.
It's fairly hard to find gay drug dealers that aren't locked up or dead, or 23, so it's fairly oblique research. But I have some good contacts, not in the gay drug world but in the legal world, who spun me in the right direction.
There's part of me that loves traveling. And there's part of me that just loves staying home. It's a double-edged sword.
When you hear actors say, 'Oh, I did all my own stunts,' it is usually crap! It's one thing jumping into water or whatever, but the real stunts are more properly done by stunt men. And it is too financially risky to have actors risk their necks, isn't it?
Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate.
Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.
I can never really remember what I look like. I'm just sort of neutral. I don't think I'm sort of, you know, hideous.
I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.
I understand acting and I understand actors. I don't really understand the world of celebrity. That's just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I'm at sea with.
When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.
You don't necessarily have to go a long way in New Zealand to be in some pretty dense and scary bush.
In the case of Wilderpeople, I walked on the first day with some apprehension actually; because it doesn't come anywhere close to anything I've really played before, this part.
I go by the role pretty much. And I think the only genre I haven't gotten to do but I'd love to is a western, but no one has ever asked me to do that. Unfortunately they are very few and far between these days, but that is one type of film I'd love to do.