It says a lot about Sam Neill that, despite an acting career that spanned five decades, he’s still best known for his scene-stealing role in 1993’s Jurassic Park. Neill played the beloved paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, a kind and courageous protagonist whom fans couldn’t help but root for, in large part due to Neill’s powerful performance.
Neill recently passed away, despite having recently won an arduous battle with an aggressive form of cancer, at the age of 78. He was diagnosed with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in 2022, which meant he had several years to ponder his mortality before his unexpected passing. His perspective on the inevitability of it all was deeply inspiring.
Neill didn’t fear death, but he wasn’t ready to go
Even after his cancer diagnosis and during its rigorous treatment, Neill kept acting. He acted in the adaptation of Apples Never Fall and in the television series The Twelve. The purpose and forward momentum in his greatest passion gave him the strength to keep going.
Ultimately, he found the whole cancer thing—along with human mortality, in general—to be a bit of an inconvenience.
“I’m not in any way frightened of dying,” he told ABC’s Australian Story in 2023. “It’s never worried me from the beginning. But I would be annoyed. I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do.”
He emphasized that the thought of dying was just so annoying, not because it was scary, but because it naturally got in the way of continuing to live.
“Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.”
The solution? It sounds cliche, but Neill found an ability later in his life to truly live in the moment. Even after his cancer went into remission, doctors could never promise him how much time he had left, so he had to make the most of what he did have. That also meant, for him, making peace with all of the days that had come before.
“One of the things I’ve learnt, which I probably knew already, is how important it is to live in the moment,” he once said. “I’m not an introspective person. I don’t look back with any great eagerness, but I was forced to look back and take an evaluation of my life. I think I’ve done some good things. Not all of them have been good. We all have regrets, but I think I can live with myself and I can die by myself OK.”
Neill found his joy away from the Hollywood spotlight
A lot of people talk about living in the moment, but Neill is a great example of someone who really did it.
Despite a thriving acting career and a worldwide reputation as a beloved performer, Neill lived on a farm in New Zealand far away from the spotlight. But his life was anything but quiet or boring. He famously named his farm animals after A-list celebrities: a chicken named Meryl Streep, a cow named Helena Bonham Carter, and a rooster named Michael Fassbender to name a few.
He also wrote a book about his life, called Did I Ever Tell You This? A lot of celebrities write memoirs, but few write them solo without the help of a ghostwriter. Neill found happiness in the difficult task of writing; capturing his favorite stories, his accrued wisdom, his regrets.
And despite living away from the spotlight, Neill loved to act. He vowed to continue “boring” audiences with his performances for as long as he could, and never seriously contemplated retirement. He once said the word was like a “swear word” to him.
It was this work, with and around the people he loved, that he wanted to continue:
“We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature,” he said. “And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big. But as for the dying? I couldn’t care less.”
Neill’s passing, while tragic in the sense that the world has lost one of its best people, reminds us of the ultimate goal: to build a life so meaningful and satisfying that you can’t bear to stop living it, even though we all must.
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