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RIP Sam Neill

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Obituary

One of the good guys, great a ctor. One of those people you felt you could have been great mates with if things had been different. Damfine winemaker too.

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Comments

    • The actor (and now winemaker) gives his glass a swirl. ‘One thing you can say about Two Paddocks is that it does get you pissed. I thought this could be our slogan at one time. “Two Paddocks – it gets you pissed.”

      [From the winery website] It’s a philosophy of viniculture you wouldn’t expect from other celebrity wine makers, Cliff Richard to name but one, but also illustrates why Neill might have been such good company over a glass or two.

    • It’s a few Christmases ago, but Mrs ivan and I had a bit of a row. Can’t remember over what but there was much by way of stony silence (me) and passive agressive tidying (her).

      She was studying social work at the time and I was in the sitting room, nursing a glass of something sustaining, watching this movie for the first time, and it’s early on in it and Ricky is being told that there’s a knife under his pillow. Mrs ivan has come, harrumphing into the room at that line and stops, looks at the telly, looks at me, looks at the telly and says ‘what the f*ck is this?’ and I said ‘dunno, but the bottles open there, and the movie looks alright…’

      It’s STILL on the sky Q box and you have to scroll ALL the way down to get to it ‘cos it’s the longest surviving thing on it, and it bears up to many repeated viewings.

      Go gently, Sam…

  4. Yes such a gentleman it would seem. There is a series down here where celebrities – actors, musicians pollies are interviewed by autistic young adults wanting to do some form of journalism. Sam came across as the most awkward and anxious of all interviewees. I don’t say that in a bad way. Just he didn’t know what to expect, cared a lot about his answers and was thrown by some of the left field questions.

  5. What a sad loss; one of those few actors whose name in a cast list guaranteed at least one performance you would enjoy. His was indeed a brilliant career. Condolences to his family and friends.

  6. Amongst many great roles, his playing against his usual suave, avuncular persona as the vicious Chief Inspector Campbell in Peaky Blinders was a revelation. Will be greatly missed.

  9. So many great performances in films and TV shows both large and small, and when interviewed or on social media he always came across as a really decent chap who couldn’t quite believe his luck. He also seemed to enjoy pointing out the occasional daftness of the business we call show.

    A few favourites that have popped up in the flood of tributes to him:

    The Dish (heartwarming comedy about a team of unsung small cogs in the giant adventure of the moon landing – real feel-good loveliness, with an admiration for all those involved in Apollo that gets me every time)
    Dean Spanley (sadly little seen, and hard to describe – about a man who says he was a dog in a former life – but lovely. Peter O’Toole! Tokay wine being a key feature of the story!)
    Restoration, a beautiful period drama
    Until the End of the World – watch the full 4-hour version if you can. Never seen a film quite like it, and Sam is, as always, terrific. Ace, Afterword-friendly soundtrack too.

    Another of his, Omen III: The Final Conflict, is not often ranked among the best movies ever made, but it does feature our man as Satan’s son, describing Jesus as “the Nazarene”. I’d never heard Christ described like that, and Sam makes it sound quite cold and demeaning. Here’s his full Satanic monologue:

    RIP, and thanks for bringing so much entertainment to so many.

    • There was a modern church at the end of the road where I lived as a young child called The Church of the Nazerene. I have vague memories of going to nursery school there, but it’s hard to be confident of what we remember from such a young age.

      I’ve just checked on Google maps and it’s still there under the same name.

  12. One of those actors where you know that even if the movie/play/series/show is crap, he’s not going to be part of the crapness.
    A good solid actor in everything he did and devlishly handsome too. I’d like to have been born with his looks.
    Can’t think of a single story told about him where he wasn’t a really nice guy.

  14. In Sweden he will always be remembered as Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe, which is a New Years Day tradition on Swedish TV…and made Sam a bit of a sex symbol here in the 80s, which he was pleasantly surprised by in every interview.

  17. I never met Sam but I know lots of people who knew him and worked with him. One comment from a long time ago was that Sam wasn’t quite “with it”, and “liked the wrong Beach Boys albums”. Make of that what you will…

  18. This popped up on Facebook – a piece Sam Neill wrote in 2007 about Split Enz’s True Colours for a book about great NZ albums.

    “True Colours by Sam Neill
    Some records, the best ones, are time machines – portals to another place and another life. True Colours is that for me. Where was I? You might even ask, who was I?
    A younger man, certainly, hitting my straps in London. A new girlfriend (blonde), a new car (convertible, albeit modest), and a new album cranked to the max on the Blaupunkt. Split Enz. It was summer, for the first time in my life I had money in the bank, I had work and friends and I was, unbelievably, in the movies. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was probably insufferable, but God it was fun!
    And what a soundtrack. There was other stuff in the glove box – I dunno – Eurythmics, Joy Division, Talking Heads, Police, the Cars – fun pop, and good loud, but somehow none of it meant as much or worked as well as Split Enz, and this record.
    A friend had sent me the tape – you’ve got to hear this, she wrote. It took a week or two before I put it on. Of course I knew the Enz (not personally, that was later). I’d seen them live on occasion in the past and I liked them a lot, admired them, but I was a little short of being a FAN. And here I was in Europe, not starving like six years previously, but flush. And I didn’t need music that was complex or arch or brainy. I needed something that was full throttle. I needed to dance. I needed a record that felt like I did.
    And then I played it. I had to stop my car on the Edgeware Road. What was this? Oh my God, it was wild and joyful, rip-shit-or-bust rock. This was it! More than that it was ours; my wee New Zealand heart swelled with a little reflected pride. And beat at 180 b.p.m. It stayed that way, I think, all that long summer and into the next.
    I play it still, and every time I know that I, that previous person, was right then. It is a great album; a glorious headlong ride with a band at the height of its powers, fuelled by testosterone and ambition and vivid talent.
    Like everything that Split Enz did, it is wracked with contradiction. Above all, I love its recklessness – it is far too fast for safety. But for all the high octane bravado it is as fearful as a novel by Kafka. “Shark Attack” is an extraordinary screaming terror of a certain kind of predatory female while at the same time has a hint of a thrilled masochism. “I Hope I Never” may be the most beautiful love song ever from our shores, but turns out not to be about love at all, or even a lover, but about a former band member. Oh yes, there was angst in the ranks of this band! (A pale reminder of the outrageous triple rhyme “there was slaughter in the water when I fought her’.)
    There are so many strong songs on the album (Poor Boy, I Got You, What’s The Matter With You etc.) but more than that is the wild way they are treated – delirium with precision; witness the mad outros on “Nobody Takes Me Seriously” and “I Wouldn’t Dream Of It.” Here I think you have to take your hat off to Eddie Rayner; like Garth “Honeydripper” Hudson of the Band, he gives the band, and this album, much of its tone and flavour – somewhere between a circus and a spaceship. Likewise to Neil Finn whose guitar drives the record with force and finesse and whose two songs, particularly “I Got You,” are known in the trade as “balltearers.” But above all it is dominated by the ferocious breakneck brilliance of Tim Finn, and its vertiginous dives between arrant self-confidence and despairing self doubt are as much the man as they are the band.
    Years have passed. The blonde didn’t last long. I drive a sensible car now. The friend who sent me the tape died long ago. And London … well, London is a foreign city. Split Enz is history.
    But the music survives. Recently I saw the N.Z. Ballet, of all things, choreograph many of these songs at the Regent Theatre in Dunedin. It was sublime: funny, touching, sexy, innocent, knowing and yes, reckless. It was one of the great nights of my life, but I watched it through tears.
    Sam Neill
    2006
    Bio: Sam Neill emerged unscathed from Dunedin and now acts, more or less, in movies and television. Produces New Zealand’s best wine: Two Paddocks. Drinks most of it himself. When sober, has been seen involved in politics, particularly pertaining to the environment. Not often sober. “

  21. I got the news when we were at the tail end of our road trip.

    Everything I’ve seen him in was worth the watch, including Merlin.

    I started following him on Twitter some years back, and he brought little rays of sunshine into what was a bleak looking world at the time.

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