The life lesson that guided Sam Neill’s career: “I think that was the best”
Sam Neill played a huge spectrum of characters over his career, with no role seeming too much in its heights or madness. It could be his truly unhinged and terrifying performance in Possession, with the actor starring alongside the incredible Isabelle Adjani as a couple on the brink of divorce, or his portrayal of a cynical scientist who finds himself softened through the experiences of seeing dinosaurs come to life during his defining role in Jurassic Park.
From the beginning of his career, it seemed as though the sky held no limits for Neill, something that only continued to expand throughout his career as he flitted between gnarly independent projects to studio blockbusters, becoming the most versatile leading man of his generation.
However, after years in a business as unpredictable and brutal as Hollywood, you don’t get by without learning a few tricks, with many actors developing an extra layer of skin or an encouraging mantra to survive the horrors of the industry. For Neill, this lesson was one he learned very early on, with the late actor reflecting on the words of wisdom he heard at exactly the right time, and they stayed with him throughout his career.
After his star-making role in My Brilliant Career, a key film from the Australian New Wave movement directed by Gillian Armstrong, Neill had his sights set on success, eventually working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Andrzej Żuławski, Jane Campion and John Carpenter. However, patience and failure are parts of the creative journey for many actors, and Neill recalled a time when he couldn’t get his life together and heard one piece of advice that changed him for the better.
When reflecting on this, Neill said, “I attended a year at a university, where I’d done bugger-all. I was acting in plays and trying to find a girlfriend and all that stuff. It came to exam time, and I realised I’d done almost no work. It got me very anxious. Anyway, I got home, and Mum said, ‘How are you, darling?’ and I said, ‘Oh, Mum, I think I’m having a breakdown! And I’ve got exams in a couple weeks and I don’t know how I’m gonna [do it]… She just looked at me and she said, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to pull yourself together, aren’t you?’ And I think that was the best lesson I learnt from her is sometimes you just have to pull yourself together.”
This advice gave Neill a practical philosophy, one that acknowledged panic without allowing it to take control. The film industry rarely offers certainty, and actors spend much of their careers hearing “no” far more often than “yes”. Learning to steady yourself, regroup and carry on was, in many ways, as valuable a skill as anything he learned on a film set.
In a world as cut-throat as show business, there are enough times when you want to give up and wallow in your own misery, with roles that seem to pass you by and opportunities that avoid your path completely. But when you’re in the middle of a crisis, sometimes the only thing you can do is think about the next best thing and simply pull yourself together, no matter how hard it might be, to dig yourself out of the hole and find a way towards the path that is meant for you.
Neill might have struggled to keep it together at the start of his career, but he most definitely managed to find his grip, leading to some of the most breathtaking films and performances of all time.
Looking back across his career, it’s difficult to argue with the results. From arthouse landmarks like Possession to global blockbusters like Jurassic Park, Neill built one of cinema’s most varied filmographies without ever seeming tied to a single type of role. If there was one lesson underpinning that longevity, it may well have been the deceptively simple advice his mother gave him all those years earlier: sometimes, the only option is to pull yourself together and keep going.
