To even skim one’s memory of Sam Neill is to realise that he truly was a totemic presence in cinema, not just for New Zealand, but for the global cinema community.
Sir Sam Neill
14 Sept 1947 – 13 July 2026
He was, in the eyes of the public, both an actor and a movie star – a rare thing to achieve. Appearing in Landfall (1975) and, more significantly, in Sleeping Dogs (1977) as the ever more fraught lead role of Smith, Neill was the face of the emergent new wave of local NZ cinema, and though he soon left for pastures glitzier, he never left us behind.
Almost from the start, Neill showed himself to be an actor who would not be typecast. In 1979 alone, he starred in the literary biopic My Brilliant Career – generally considered one of the greatest Australian films of all time – and The Journalist – a sex comedy generally considered one of the worst Australian films of all time.
Neill would play anything from upstanding gentlemen to intellectuals, and lead-with-the-chin heroes, grumpy, haggard farmers, the fretful, the two-faced, the cynical and the insidious.
Whether he was the classic Spielbergian hero, like Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, the titular clergyman of Dean Spanley (whose canine tendencies are eked out by alcohol), or the slippery CIA spook in Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Neill brought his A-game to any role, no matter the significance or quality of the finished product.
On an industry level, he seemed able to straddle the Hollywood/independent divide with ease, working with Hollywood stalwarts such as Steven Spielberg, John McTiernan and Paul W.S. Anderson, becoming a favourite of populists such as Taika Waititi and the irascible John Carpenter.
Alternatively, his C.V. also includes films for Wim Wenders, Krzysztof Zanussi and Sally Potter. Let’s also not forget that he played a key supporting role in New Zealand’s sole Palme d’Or win: 1993’s The Piano, written and directed by Jane Campion, who recently wrote a glowing obit about him in The Guardian.
Other exploits, such as his vineyard and his later-day battles against mining in Otago, were noted and praised, but one thing that risks slipping through the cracks is a 1995 documentary about New Zealand cinema that he directed, titled Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey by Sam Neill. It was and (largely) remains the best summation of New Zealand’s cinema landscape.
Neill hosts the film with gleeful flourishes, approachable authority and a sense of humour. Bracingly unsentimental, the documentary manages, in under an hour, to celebrate local creativity whilst rending apart a broader cultural malaise of ignorance and dullness. It is a film from which pulling just one quote would not do it justice, because the entire script is so on point.
The diversity of his output means that we often forget just how many horror films he did. Daybreakers, Dead Calm, Event Horizon, In the Mouth of Madness and the largely forgotten Snow White: A Tale of Terror, to name but a few.
Fittingly for this site, his international breakthrough came as a result of two horror films: Omen III: The Final Conflict and Possession. Both encapsulate the chief strands of his movie career.
Playing the adult Damien in the third Omen movie, Neill would later lament his performance. But the film, as a whole, is pretty uninteresting Hollywood horror, managing to make the new, yuppie Antichrist’s hostile takeover of the Second Coming boring. It did, however, put him on the map in Tinseltown.
On the other hand, Possession saw him create an unholy, all-consuming marriage with the most arthouse of darlings: co-star Isabelle Adjani and director Andrzej Zuławski.
A screaming, clawing pit of mouldering edifices, bloodthirsty shouting matches, shocking self-harm and outré sex, Possession takes on true love at its most hysterical and destructive with a siege-like mentality. The film hunkers down with the story of ex-pats Mark and Anna as their divorce spirals out of all control, burying them alive amid the enshrouding greys of a divided Europe.
Upon release, Possession was met with critical disdain and “video nasty” triumph, later becoming one of the most celebrated horror films of all time.
While proud of the film, Neill himself said of Zuławski: “He asked things of us that I couldn’t – and wouldn’t – go to now”. Neill is magnificent in the role, leaning over the precipice alongside Adjani for the entirety of its runtime, and daring us to watch what they’ll do. It’s particularly depressing that a section of the New Zealand audience I saw it with a couple of years ago laughed derisively throughout.
The last shout-out, however, should go to Neill’s one New Zealand horror movie, a movie he essentially nudged into existence: Gaylene Preston’s Perfect Strangers.
Preston and Neill had known each other for many years before; according to Preston, in an all-too-brief interview I did with her, it was Neill who nudged the film into being simply by asking why they hadn’t done one together.
Released to critical acclaim in 2003, Perfect Strangers tells the story of Rachael Blake’s chip shop worker, Melanie, out for a night with the girls when she meets Sam Neill’s sexily mysterious bar patron (named only in the credits as The Man). He is in every way a cut above the beery, beardy bozos trying to chat her up at the local tavern, but she is in for a nasty surprise.
The film is one of Preston’s best, and it grows on you like bamboo under the fingernails. Like Peeping Tom, go back to it, and it’s more fucked up than you first thought, helped along by Preston’s masterful mise-en-scene and Rachael Blake’s hugely engaging lead performance. However, you know Sam Neill is well up for this. He brings every facet of his onscreen persona to bear, from the straight-arrow gent, descending to sweaty rotter (in more ways than one).
Cinema creating immortality may sound grandiose, but put it this way: we’ll never have to miss Sam Neill.
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