Sam Neill has died

(theguardian.com)

243 points | by j4mie 6 hours ago

28 comments

  • 1313ed01 2 hours ago
    RIP. Here in Sweden the headlines mention primarily his role in Ivanhoe, a movie that has aired on Swedish TV almost every New Years for over 40 years.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe_(1982_film)

    He posted this video message to the Swedish people for New Years 2023: https://www.svt.se/kultur/ivanhoe-skadespelarens-nyarshalsni...

    Great movie.

    • bovermyer 1 hour ago
      I have only ever seen the 1950s Ivanhoe film and part of a... I think it was a 1990s TV miniseries. I'll have to watch this.
      • az226 35 minutes ago
        I watched it every Jan 1 with some pizza
  • mindcrash 2 hours ago
    Jurassic Park was the first movie I saw as a twelve year old boy at the cinema, and it not only made me a huge fan of the series but as a boy I was really into dinosaurs and it was really something to see them being "real" on a big screen for the first time.

    "I have a theory that there are two kinds of boys. There are those that want to be astronomers, and those that want to be astronauts[...]That's the difference between imagining and seeing"

    Thank you for everything, doctor Grant.

  • geocrasher 2 hours ago
    "I would have liked to have seen Montana..."

    You are forever in our hearts, Vasili.

  • Xenoamorphous 5 hours ago
    So sad. Jurassic Park had a tremendous impact on me as a dino obsessed teenager ( was 13 when it came out). RIP.
  • olivierestsage 36 minutes ago
    Rest in peace. Like many here, his performances were hugely influential on my childhood (and adulthood). One I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is Merlin.
  • pico303 4 hours ago
    One of my favorite actors of all time. If you haven’t seen it, watch The Dish.
    • the-mitr 3 hours ago
      also the Event Horizon, his change of character is something you don't forget..
      • rbanffy 3 hours ago
        Not my favourite movie though. The horror in space trope is a very tired one.

        Alongside the poorly lit spaceship. Spaceships are workplaces and workplaces should provide adequate illumination so you can see what you are doing.

        But I LOVE what he did for the New Zealand flag.

        • aarond0623 2 hours ago
          The part I liked in Event Horizon was Laurence Fishburn's character seeing the logs of the crew going crazy and immediately turning it off and saying, "We're leaving."

          Probably the smartest decision made in a horror film. Time to get out of Dodge.

        • Taniwha 2 hours ago
          Pretty sure it's "But I LOVE what he did for the Australian flag." - he is a kiwi but that's arguably the Aussie flag with the colonial bit replaced with the local one
        • steerpike 2 hours ago
          Australian flag. The black, red and yellow flag he replaced the Union Jack with is the Australian first nations flag
        • ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago
          Pandorum was pretty crazy (he wasn’t in it, but it was an odd space horror movie, and I feel that Event Horizon kind of paved the way).
      • s_dev 3 hours ago
        Even Horizon is a Warhammer 40k film that has nothing to do with Warhammer 40k.
      • InsideOutSanta 3 hours ago
        That's always the role I remember first when I hear his name, because it seems so unusual for him and because he was so great in it.
    • rbanffy 3 hours ago
      It’s a wonderful little movie. Absolutely adorable.
  • wewewedxfgdf 2 hours ago
    I saw him interviewed once and they asked about his cancer and he said that he did not find it very interesting. He said something to the effect of he finds living interesting and there's far more interesting things to talk about than his cancer. Paraphrased I don't recall exactly.
    • Findecanor 2 hours ago
      It is a touchy subject. When you have it, you don't want to think about it all the time.
      • wewewedxfgdf 1 hour ago
        You misunderstand - the message is he was far more interested in living and what he could do with his life and genuinely found the cancer not interesting compared to other things.

        He wasn't just being touchy and trying to change the subject.

  • mulhoon 3 hours ago
    I watched Possession (1981) a few weeks back. One of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen. His acting was so different from his later stuff.
    • fetus8 3 hours ago
      Possession is such a fantastically special movie, heavily due to Neill and Adjani’s performances.

      RIP to a real one.

  • bluerooibos 3 hours ago
    An absolute legend. I thought he'd be around for longer. Thanks for making Jurassic Park what it is, Sam.
  • JodieBenitez 5 hours ago
    I'm getting old, all my childhood heroes die.
    • simondotau 36 minutes ago
      It gets worse. You start realising that the new heroes you're discovering are all younger than you.
    • phtrivier 5 hours ago
      Here's to "trying to be someone's childhood heroes"
      • OJFord 4 hours ago
        Without dancing on TikTok or pulling stupid faces for YouTube thumbnails
        • phtrivier 3 hours ago
          Yup, we can dream bigger and give bigger dreams :)

          A silver lining in the tech progress is this : I remember watching movies from the 60s or the 70s, in the 90s, and feeling "damn, that looks old". I could only care about movies made after 1984, or something (and, men, did amblin and the "produced by Steven Spielberg-verse" give us good things to watch.)

          I suspect that, now that movies are kinda "converging" in terms of visual, it will be easier to share the movies of our childhoods with the next generation.

          Besides, they don't care that much about looks : I litteraly witnessed 10 year old kids getting hooked on my 1991 game boy !!!!

  • benburton 4 hours ago
    Today New Zealand has lost a national treasure.

    Haere atu rā ki te okiokinga.

    • nephihaha 3 hours ago
      And Northern Ireland.
      • decimalenough 2 hours ago
        And Australia. He lived in Sydney and the Aussie PM just posted a tribute.
        • josephcooney 19 minutes ago
          He's as Australian as Russell Crowe and Lamingtons!
  • twelvedogs 36 minutes ago
    i saw him around a lot on tv and so on as an australian, just genuinely a pretty good bloke. like i dunno what to say i don't know if i've ever cried about an actor dying before

    i'd love to say he was awesome in every role but he always seemed super honest in his performance and i think that hurt him a lot when he had to play bullshit characters lol.

    i dunno i'm just some guy

  • weikju 38 minutes ago
    Aside from Jurassic Park and the other roles mentioned, I also liked his role in the Merlin TV two part movies. Now I need to rewatch both…
  • samsudden 1 hour ago
    RIP. Recently watched Series 3 of The Twelve, and thought "No way is he in his 70s", and had just finished reading his autobiography "Did I Ever Tell You This?" - delightful read.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago
    Ah, that sucks. I’ve always enjoyed him.

    One of the inevitable features of getting older. All my cultural icons keep checking out.

  • gautamcgoel 1 hour ago
    So sad to hear this. Hard to imagine anyone else playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.
  • chvid 3 hours ago
    Event horizon.
    • pantulis 1 hour ago
      "Where we're going, we don't need eyes to see".
  • te_chris 3 hours ago
    As a kiwi he was the best of us. Creative, talented, willing to roll up his sleeves, maker of exceptional wine. Haere ra
  • TrackerFF 3 hours ago
    I’ve watched “In The Mouth of Madness” so many times. It is in my top 3 most re-watched horror movies list. Perfect Lovecraftian horror, and Sam Neill was perfect in it.

    Do you read Sutter Cane?

  • Neil44 4 hours ago
    He had a lovely gentle demeanor about him. He was good recently in the Untamed series.
  • nephihaha 3 hours ago
    Hunt for the Wilder People was fun, as was Reilly, Ace of Spies.
    • donatj 11 minutes ago
      I honestly didn't know he was a Kiwi until I saw Hunt for the Wilder People. Absolutely fantastic movie.
    • bushwart 1 hour ago
      Loved Hunt for the Wilder People.
  • lapcat 1 hour ago
    I'll never forget Neill as Damien in Omen III.

    I'd very much like to forget Neill as Damien in Omen III. Chilling.

  • major505 1 hour ago
    If someone here likes horror movies I highly recommend watching his work in Possession (1981) and Mouth of Madness (1995).

    If you prefer a more family focused comedy, go with Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), from the same director of the excelent What we Do in the Shadows.

  • tjpnz 1 hour ago
    Bicentennial Man is one of my favourite films of his (also Robin Williams). There's an interesting subplot in there on right to repair which is very much relevant today. It also depicts a future 30 years away which might've seemed bleak when it was first conceived, but is in many ways more hopeful than what we actually got.
  • vinkelhake 4 hours ago
    Give me a ping Vasily. One ping only please.

    Sad.

    • rbanffy 3 hours ago
      A minute of silence for him. No echoes.
  • ares623 3 hours ago
    RIP. Where he's going, he won't need eyes. Wait, perhaps that was an inappropriate quote to use.
  • GenericDev 4 hours ago
    [dead]
  • aaron695 4 hours ago
    [dead]