Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known to many moviegoers as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, died Monday in Sydney, Australia, The New York Times reported. He was 78.
Neill’s career was larger and stranger than one dinosaur franchise, which is to his credit. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster made him a familiar face for American audiences, and he returned to the role decades later in Jurassic World Dominion in 2022. But the résumé around it shows an actor who did not get trapped in one lane.
He played the adult Damien in Omen III: The Final Conflict, a Russian officer in The Hunt for Red October, and an actor portraying Odin inside a theatrical troupe in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. In 1997, he appeared in the space horror film Event Horizon, a movie with defenders even among viewers who argue about almost everything else in that film.
Neill also did some of his most admired work away from the obvious studio machinery. The 1993 drama The Piano, a smaller independent film that won Oscars, gave him a showcase far removed from franchise spectacle. His career kept toggling between popular entertainment and more critically praised projects, without treating either category as beneath him.
A long television career beside the film roles
Television was not a side quest for Neill. He received his first Golden Globe nomination for the lead role in the 1980s series Reilly, Ace of Spies. In 1998, he played the title wizard in the miniseries Merlin, a performance that brought both an Emmy nomination and another Golden Globe nomination.
He later appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in The Tudors. He was also part of the ensemble in the 2015 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
For a younger television audience, Neill’s sharpest small-screen turn may be Major Chester Campbell in Peaky Blinders. The character served as a ruthless intelligence officer, an antagonist, and a romantic rival to Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby.
The through line was range: horror, spy drama, Shakespeare-adjacent fantasy, prestige period television, studio action, independent drama, and comic-book cameos. Neill did not need one definitive role, although Jurassic Park gave him one anyway.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
