New Zealand actor Sam Neill achieved international fame playing Dr. Alan Grant in the 1993 film Jurassic Park. But his career included many other notable TV and film appearances.
https://p.dw.com/p/5GyRTSam Neill played leading roles in numerous films like 'Jurassic Park' and 'The Piano'Image: Mario Anzuoni/REUTERSAdvertisementActor Sam Neill has died, his family said in a statement on Monday. He was 78.
The statement said he had died in the eastern Australian city of Sydney.
The New Zealand actor rose to international prominence for his performance as Dr. Alan Grant in the 1993 film Jurassic Park.
"The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free," a statement posted on Neill's Instagram page said, referring to his diagnosis with blood cancer announced in 2023.
Neill's acting career was launched in the 1970s, with his role in Gillian Armstrong's 1979 film My Brilliant Career already making his name known internationally.
He played a multitude of other TV and film roles, including the British historical crime drama Peaky Blinders, the US spy thriller The Hunt for Red October and Jane Campion's The Piano, which won the highest award in Cannes in 1993.
But it was his role in Jurassic Park as the paleontologist Grant, where he played alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough, that cemented his international standing.
In March 2023, his memoir, "Did I Ever Tell You This?" was published.
He was also awarded a knighthood in New Zealand in 2022 recognizing his "outstanding contribution to film"
As a sideline to his acting, Neill also ran vineyards in the Central Otago region of New Zealand's South Island.
In 2023, Neill announced he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but said in April this year that a scan had detected no cancer in his body following treatment.
He told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2023 that he could not "pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments."
"But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends," he said.
Neill, who was born in 1947 in Omagh, Northern Ireland, to an English mother and a New Zealand father, moved to New Zealand with his family in 1954, growing up in Christchurch.
He is survived by four children and eight grandchildren.
