Key Points
Sam Neill was “pretty sick” during his final days, his ex Laura Tingle says.
Neill died on Monday at 78.
The actor battled blood cancer before announcing his remission in April.
Sam Neill was “pretty sick” in the final days before his death, his ex Laura Tingle said.
Australian political journalist Tingle, 65, dated Neill from 2018 to 2021 after he separated from his wife of 28 years, Noriko Watanabe. Neill died on Monday at the age of 78 after announcing he was cancer-free in April.
“He’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years intensively. And that takes a toll on anybody’s body,” Tingle told host Hamish Macdonald on Tuesday’s episode of Sydney Mornings.
She continued of his battle with a type of blood cancer, angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, “He’d had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy and, thankfully, it had finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he’d had, but it left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system and I think his poor body sort of got a bit exhausted, as makes sense. So, he’s been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks and everybody who loved him has been willing him on, from near and far. But, I think, it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time.”
When Macdonald noted Neill’s poignant 2023 interview with ABC’s Australian Story, in which he admitted he was not afraid of dying but would be “annoyed” as there were still things he wanted to do, Tingle stated that he very much felt that way in the days before his death.
Sam Neill and Laura Tingle
Credit: Laura Tingle/Instagram
“I think that was definitely where he was,” Tingle explained, celebrating his zest for his career. “He loved to work. He was largely defined by being on a movie set. He used to say, ‘I’m addicted to working.’ And I think he was.”
Tingle said industry work was “substantial” to Neill, best known for starring in movies like Jurassic Park (1993) and TV shows like Merlin (1998), and that he loved the challenge of filming.
“When he, by his own admission, fell into acting, that sort of sense of being always on the move, always becoming somebody else, was just such a large part of who he was,” Tingle said, “and he was so good at it.”
Neill has been remembered by many colleagues and celebrity friends following his death, including costars like Laura Dern, Cillian Murphy, and Nicole Kidman, as well as director Steven Spielberg.
“Sam was exceptionally collaborative,” Spielberg said in a statement shared to Amblin’s Instagram account. “It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him. Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”
Dern, who played Neill’s love interest in the films, called the actor her “beloved lifetime friend” in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “He showed me the depths of loyalty, protectiveness and love always with the driest of wit,” Dern said. “He was a true and noble gentleman, wrapped up in my dream leading man. I will love you forever, Dr. Alan Grant.”
Kidman, who starred with Neill in Dead Calm, said she was “immensely saddened” by the news.
“Sam was one of the greats, a joy to be around,” Kidman said in a statement to The Sydney Morning Herald. “We met when I was just 18 and he took me under his wing and we stayed friends for life. He was charming, kind, funny and intelligent. He will be greatly missed, and my heart goes out to his family.”
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Neill had four children — two sons with former partners and daughters Elena and Maiko with Watanabe. He also had eight grandchildren.
“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” a statement from his family read. “The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free. They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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