{"id":604202,"date":"2026-04-13T13:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/604202\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T13:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:58:09","slug":"post-your-questions-for-sam-neill-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/604202\/","title":{"rendered":"Post your questions for Sam Neill | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

There aren\u2019t many actors who have gone down in cinematic history for simply taking off a safari hat and a pair of sunglasses. But when you think of Sam Neill, you probably think of that moment in Jurassic Park<\/a> when he stands up in the Jeep, removes his shades, and stares, slack-jawed, at a towering Brachiosaurus. Don\u2019t let the explanation of how CGI worked back in the 90s ruin it for you. \u201cWhat I\u2019m actually looking at is Steven Spielberg with a big long stick with a tennis ball at the end,\u201d he told Graham Norton, even going as far as to recreate the scene for laughs. Sometimes, great acting is just very committed pretending.<\/p>\n

Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, Neill first came to attention in a white shirt and black tie in period drama My Brilliant Career, before taking a turn to the darker side with Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, and In the Mouth of Madness. Hollywood soon beckoned \u2013 as second in command to Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October, as Holly Hunter\u2019s husband in The Piano, and as a geeky scientist in cult favourite Event Horizon.<\/p>\n

In more recent years, Neill, 78, has gravitated towards more idiosyncratic, director-led projects, including a cranky foster uncle in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a pious preacher in neo-western Sweet Country<\/a>, and an empathetic sheep farmer in Rams<\/a> \u2013 roles in which he specialises in a kind of gruff, weather-beaten warmth. On telly, he\u2019s leaned into darker, less likable characters, such as Cardinal Wolsey in The Tudors, a cat burglar in The Simpsons, and the corrupt and ruthless police inspector Maj Chester Campbell in Peaky Blinders.<\/p>\n

His next film, Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, sees him return to blockbuster territory alongside Kaitlyn Dever and Matthew Modine. But for this readers\u2019 interview, we\u2019re heading back to Dead Calm, his sun-drenched, nerve-shredding ocean-based thriller with Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane \u2013 ranked by the Guardian<\/a> as his third best ever performance. Dead Calm \u2013 featuring Neill in a fetching blue denim shirt this time \u2013 is out in 4K later this year, so consider this your excuse to re-watch it and remember that open water can be just as terrifying as a T-Rex or a giant radioactive sea lizard.<\/p>\n

So, what would you like to ask him? Perhaps you\u2019d like to know whether there are any additions on his New Zealand farm, home to Susan Sarandon the sheep, Helena Bonham Carter the cow and Taika Waititi the pig? He also owns a winery, near the site of a proposed goldmine, which he\u2019s battling hard<\/a> to prevent being approved.<\/p>\n

In 2023, he published a memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?<\/a>, in which he revealed he had stage-three blood cancer, from which he is now in remission. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to die,\u201d he said at the time, \u201cbut it would annoy me. Because I\u2019d really like another decade or two, you know? We\u2019ve built all these lovely terraces, we\u2019ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature. And I\u2019ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big. But as for the dying? I couldn\u2019t care less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Please post your questions below by 6pm BST, Thursday 16 April, and we\u2019ll publish his answers in our reader interview series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dead Calm is out in 4K later in the year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There aren\u2019t many actors who have gone down in cinematic history for simply taking off a safari hat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-604202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}