{"id":524985,"date":"2026-07-14T04:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T04:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/524985\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T04:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T04:25:09","slug":"sam-neill-remembered-laura-tingle-shares-emotional-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/524985\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Neill remembered: Laura Tingle shares emotional farewell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">The post featured clips of the pair travelling through New Zealand, singing together, walking a pig, rowing a boat and sharing other everyday moments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">The post has attracted more than 2.1 million views and 300,000 likes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">While both were private about their relationship, Neill occasionally spoke about Tingle publicly, describing the relationship as something he was \u201cgrateful\u201d for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cMy guess is that I\u2019m in it for the politics; she\u2019s in it for the wine,\u201d Neill said in an interview with Australian Story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">Before his relationship with Tingle, Neill was married to makeup artist Noriko Watanabe. The couple wed in 1989 and remained together for nearly 30 years before separating in 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">Friend and Hunt for the Wilderpeople co-star Rima Te Wiata told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/sir-sam-neill-had-pneumonia-before-death-in-sydney-co-star-says\/NRSRGK45RBCMXHPMWKSTJ6HZIQ\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/sir-sam-neill-had-pneumonia-before-death-in-sydney-co-star-says\/NRSRGK45RBCMXHPMWKSTJ6HZIQ\/\">Ryan Bridge TODAY Neill <\/a>had pneumonia before his death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cIt really sucks actually. As he said in the press once, he\u2019s not scared of death but he would be annoyed. He would be like, \u2018Oh for goodness\u2019 sake I just got over my cancer and now look, now I get pneumonia. What next?\u2019 But he\u2019s on his big journey now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">The beloved New Zealand actor announced he was cancer-free in April after receiving treatment for a rare form of blood cancer for several years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">Neill\u2019s family said last night: they \u201dwould like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">The actor lived in Central Otago and owned the Two Paddocks vineyards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">He was best known worldwide as the palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg\u2019s blockbuster Jurassic Park, which premiered in 1993.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">In 2025, he received the prestigious New Zealand Screen Legend Award at the annual New Zealand Screen Awards, honouring his five-decade legacy in television and film.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gngXgPCjmfo\" style=\"display:none\">He is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The post featured clips of the pair travelling through New Zealand, singing together, walking a pig, rowing a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3376,18919,534,14645,3623,6179,16719,2688,24925,17211,6096,18461,111,43,139,69,3111,15120,18460,180,17218,1734,259820,10140,11587],"class_list":["post-524985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-actor","tag-aged","tag-amid","tag-beloved","tag-celebrity","tag-died","tag-emotional","tag-farewell","tag-flood","tag-laura","tag-message","tag-neill","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-out","tag-remembered","tag-sam","tag-shares","tag-stood","tag-sydney","tag-tingle","tag-tributes","tag-yesterday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}