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WELLINGTON<\/strong> \u2013 Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in \u201cJurassic Park\u201d to playing Holly Hunter\u2019s husband in \u201cThe Piano,\u201d has died. He was 78. <\/p>\n In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor\u2019s social media page. <\/p>\n His death was \u201csudden and unexpected,\u201d the statement said, adding that he \u201cremained cancer free\u201d when he died. A cause of death wasn\u2019t specified.<\/p>\n \u201cSam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,\u201d his family wrote. <\/p>\n Actor came to world’s notice with \u2018Dead Calm\u2019 and \u2018My Brilliant Career\u2019<\/p>\n Neil was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy \u201cSweet Revenge\u201d to chopping off Hunter\u2019s finger in \u201cThe Piano\u201d to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror \u201cEvent Horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cOmen III: The Final Conflict,\u201d he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in \u201cThe Tudors.\u201d<\/p>\n The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong\u2019s 1979 film \u201cMy Brilliant Career,\u201d which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce\u2019s \u201cDead Calm,\u201d a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.<\/p>\n Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi\u2019s \u201cPlenty\u201d and \u2014 again for Schepisi \u2014 in \u201cA Cry in the Dark,\u201d a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 miniseries \u201cMerlin\u201d and another as narrator of 2017\u2019s \u201cWild New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Jurassic Park\u2019 was his best-known film <\/p>\n Perhaps Neill achieved his highest level of fame in \u201cJurassic Park\u201d playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.<\/p>\n His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: \u201cDinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?\u201d<\/p>\n Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn\u2019t return for \u201cThe Lost World: Jurassic Park II\u201d in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and \u201cJurassic World: Dominion\u201d in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably a little late to learn these things,\u201d he told the Daily New of New York in 2001, \u201cbut I finally feel I\u2019ve worked out how to be an action hero. I\u2019m happier with Grant this time. He\u2019s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Neill grew up in Northern Ireland, then New Zealand<\/p>\n Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He was born Nigel Neill, but told interviewers he started to go by Sam because there were too many Nigels at his school.<\/p>\n His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in \u201cSleeping Dogs\u201d in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.<\/p>\n Neill\u2019s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in \u201cThe Hunt for Red October\u201d and an investigator in director John Carpenter\u2019s \u201cIn the Mouth of Madness.\u201d<\/p>\n