The 2008 movie Sam Neill considered his most overlooked role: “Not many people have seen it”
As a career-long combination of character actor and leading man, Sam Neill had a habit of doing some of his best work in movies or TV shows that didn’t find as wide an audience as his highest-profile roles.
Obviously, that inevitably comes with the territory when the highest-profile role of his professional life will always be Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, and taking top billing in a classic blockbuster that debuted as the highest-grossing release in cinema history is a hard high point to dislodge.
From John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness and Fred Schepisi’s Evil Angels to Paul WS Anderson’s Event Horizon and John Ruane’s Death in Brunswick, Neill’s filmography featured a fair few titles that didn’t set the box office alight, but regardless of how they fared in theatres, the common thread was that he always pulled his weight in front of the cameras.
The New Zealander spent decades pinballing between local productions and Hollywood, spreading himself across film and television, and in a bittersweet way, it’s almost fitting that March 2027’s Godzilla x Kong: Supernova will be his first posthumous credit, as it brings him back to the blockbuster creature feature arena that first made him a household name back in 1993.
There wasn’t a genre that Neill didn’t tackle at least once in his five-decade career, and the picture he considered his most overlooked combined three of them. A comedic drama with fantastical elements, Toa Fraser’s 2008 feature, Dean Spanley, held a special place in the star’s heart as one of his favourites.
Calling the title character “my most difficult role ever” in his memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?, the story finds a father and son duo discovering that Neill’s aristocrat is the reincarnation of a dog, and when he regales Peter O’Toole and Jeremy Northam’s Horatio and Henslow Fisk with tales from his past life as a canine, it helps them heal their fractured familial bond.
“It amazes me how often people tell me that Dean Spanley is not just their favourite film of mine, but their favourite movie, period,” he wrote. “Not many people have seen it, which makes that reaction all the more surprising.” Of the people who haven’t, Neill added, “I’d like you to see it,” noting that “I myself am very proud of it.”
Not that he was instantly sold on the part, with the actor admitting that “it scared the life out of me before we started,” so much so that he’d turned it down a couple of times. “They kept coming back, and I eventually buckled,” Neill reflected. “I’m glad I did. It’s a comedic role, but full of pathos as well.”
While critics greeted Dean Spanley with widespread enthusiasm, it made less than $1.5 million in ticket sales against a $15 million budget, and it didn’t even receive a theatrical release in the United States, being sent straight to television instead. Those are the unfortunate hallmarks of an underrated gem, with Neill considering it his career’s most overlooked and underappreciated effort.
