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
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you want to learn about America, watch 'The Wire.' It's a profound piece of entertainment.
I love the fact that you can't tell pinot noir what to do; it has to express itself. And it's always just beyond your grasp. If you do manage to get a hold of it, it's only for a fleeting moment.
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.
Big budgets don't necessarily give you big films.
I think it took us all by surprise. I mean, I knew that people in New Zealand would like [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but no one really anticipated how much they would embrace it as it is. And it's playing widely in Australia now; they're running it as well. It's going to be interesting to see how it does it in the States, but I think if Sundance was any indication, I imagine it could do well.
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.
This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.
You never really know who you're going to be acting with, but that doesn't really matter. 99% of the actors I've worked with, and they number in the thousands, I've liked.
I like actors. I like their insecurities, their humor and their intelligence.