Sam Neill Height, Age, Death, Girlfriend, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Sam Neill

• Sam Neill was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland as Nigel John Dermot Neill.

• He had English mother Priscilla beatrice Ingham and a New Zealand father, Dermot Neill.

• As a result, he was a multiple national citizen – New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

• His father was an officer in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, serving in Northern Ireland at the time of his birth.

• His great grandfather, Percival Neill, a wine merchant, who imported wine from France, had emigrated to Australia earlier, following a career as a merchant in Melbourne, travelling on to New Zealand and settling in Dunedin in 1863.

• Neill and Co eventually merged into the listed hospitality group, Wilson Neill.

• The Neill family immigrated to New Zealand in 1954, and lived in Christchurch in the suburb of Cashmere.

• His parents had decided to relocate to Dunedin, the city where his father had settled, after a year, and the family travelled there, with his younger sister Juliet following them in the holidays, and roaming the family’s extensive lands at Macandrew Bay.

• While at school Neill began to call himself Sam, as there were others named Nigel and he didn’t think Nigel was a strong enough name for New Zealand playgrounds.

• His first major success in New Zealand was Sleeping Dogs in 1977 which was the first New Zealand film to be widely released overseas.

• Neill then went to Australia where he starred in My Brilliant Career in 1979, opposite Judy Davis, and the movie was a success abroad.

• Neill’s first major role was the real life spy Sidney Reilly in the miniseries Reilly, Ace of Spies in 1983 in the United Kingdom.

• He then had the opportunity to play the Marquis de Lafayette in the two-part historical drama La Revolution Francaise in 1989, the thriller Dead Calm in 1989 and the horror movie The Fly in 1994.

• In 1989, he wed make up artist Noriko Watanabe and the couple went on to have a daughter; Watanabe’s daughter from her previous marriage was also adopted.

• Neill appeared in Jurassic Park, The Piano and Question of Faith in 1993 and it was the latter an independent drama that featured Neill with Anne Archer in a true story of a woman’s battle against cancer whilst attempting to conceive.

• He reunited with the son that he had fathered and he was made the guardian in 1994.

• He made his acting comeback in 1995 in John Carpenter’s film In the Mouth of Madness, and in 2003 he returned to directing as a writer and director of the documentary Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey.

• He reprised his role as Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park III in 2001 and in 2001, he was the host and narrator for a BBC documentary series titled Space, which was released in the United States as Hyperspace.

• Neill was an elected Member of Otago Regional Council for 12 years, which expired in October 2019.

• Doctors diagnosed him with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma, a blood cancer, in March 2022, when he was promoted for Jurassic World Dominion.

• In 2022 he also returned to the role of Dr Alan Grant in June for Jurassic World Dominion, and was given the status of a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

• In March 2023, Neill announced his diagnosis of cancer to the public and stated he was in remission, but had to receive chemotherapy every month for his lifetime.

• He has also written a memoir entitled Did I Ever Tell You This.

• After his chemotherapy regimen became ineffective, Neill received CAR T cell therapy in April of 2026, as part of a clinical trial in Australia, he said.

• At that time, a scan revealed no cancers in his body and he campaigned for increased uptake of this treatment for patients with blood cancer in Australia and New Zealand.

• Neill passed away in St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney, Australia on 13 July 2026 surrounded by his family and at the age of 78.

• He died cancer-free and family members said that his demise was sudden and unexpected.