We woke up today to the sad news of Sam Neill's death, aged 78. The New Zealand actor had a career spanning almost 50 years, but it was in 1994 that he rose to fame with his role as the palaeontologist Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, the man who made several generations of children (and not-so-children) fall in love with dinosaurs.
Neill's death was sudden and unexpected, as suggested by the post shared by his family on the actor's official social media account. Sam Neill was diagnosed in 2023 with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare form of Hodgkin's lymphoma, but according to those close to him, he had managed to overcome the cancer, and it does not appear that his death is related to it.
<social>https://www.instagram.com/p/DauK0SrT6uJ/</social>
Jurassic Park, The Piano, Final Destination, Peaky Blinders, Jessica... We will always remember you, Neil. Rest in peace.