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
Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.
I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.
I enjoy some physical stuff. But if I had a choice between playing a scene where it's raining, it's terribly cold, I'm wet and I'm being drowned and playing a scene with dinosaur eggs in a laboratory, I'd probably take the latter. It's warmer and generally more comfortable!
I get very antsy and nervous if I don't know what the next job is.
The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner.
Dexter' I'm very fond of. I got addicted to that.
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.
Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.
I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.
I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.
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.
[Hunt for the Wilderpeople] people seem to be just finding it hilarious in Sundance. I would think that judging on the feedback I get; it's a very warming film. It's not sentimental, but people are sort of heart warmed by a message that's pretty rare.
Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.