Sam Neill reveals he battled stage-three blood cancer
Jurrasic Park actor Sam Neill has revealed that he had previously battled stage-three blood cancer. The New Zealand actor shared his diagnosis in the pages of his new memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?
“The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying,” he writes in chapter one of the book, Did I Ever Tell You This? “I may have to speed this up.”
According to Neill, he first noticed swollen glands while doing promotion for Jurassic World Dominion in March of 2022. A cancer diagnosis soon followed, but Neill was able to keep the news to himself. Neill saved the information for his new book.
“I found myself with nothing to do,” Neill told The Guardian in an interview ahead of the book’s release. “And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘what am I going to do?’”
“I never had any intention to write a book,” Neill added. “But as I went on and kept writing, I realised it was actually sort of giving me a reason to live and I would go to bed thinking, ‘I’ll write about that tomorrow … that will entertain me.’ And so it was a lifesaver really, because I couldn’t have gone through that with nothing to do, you know.”
“I’m not afraid to die,” Neill said, “but it would annoy me. Because I’d really like another decade or two, you know? We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature. And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big. But as for the dying? I couldn’t care less.”
In an interview with The Independent last month, Neill also baulked at the idea of retiring from acting. “The idea of giving up my day job? Intolerable! I love acting. It’s really good for me to keep walking onto new sets with young actors and all that stimulation. New words, new ideas, there’s nothing like it. I never want to give that up. The idea of retirement, of having to play golf, fills me with untold dread,” he said.
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