Sir Sam Neill is known as an open book, sharing yarns from his Central Otago vineyard home with his social media following, but in his soon to be released memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? Sir Sam reveals even more of the highs and lows of his life.
From his breakthrough lead in 1977 kiwi feature Sleeping Dogs Neill has gone on to act in almost 100 feature films including Jurassic Park and The Piano, as well as dozens of TV shows including Peaky Blinders.
Photo: text publishing
Among the revelations in his book is that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer a year ago.
An initial 18-week round of chemotherapy to treat the stage three lymphoma was not successful, Neill told RNZ, however his cancer is now in remission after he was put on a new treatment regime.
"If there is one thing that cancer teaches you, it is how great it is to be alive," he said.
"When the first lot of chemo failed and it looked like I was on the way out, I was signed up for a new type of chemo."
His treatments are ongoing and while they knocked him around, Neill said he was "not complaining".
"The first couple of days after the chemo are pretty miserable, to be honest, and then on day three I start to perk up and then I feel just wonderful again."
He has been in remission for about eight months, he said.
Neill said he began writing his memoir after suddenly finding himself marooned in his flat with no work to do, post-diagnosis.
"I'm used to doing things - more or less - with my brain, and I had nothing to exercise it with, so I started to write down stories."
He described the process as "writing against the clock".
"I actually didn't know how long I had to live, so it was written probably more hurriedly than I would have otherwise."
After a time, Neill said he realised the stories collectively seemed to have a narrative of some kind, though it took encouragement from a friend of a friend to convince him to send the manuscript to some publishers.
"I got an immediate response from all three publishers saying, 'we love your book, and we really want to publish it' ... that really cheered me up no end."
In a wide-ranging interview with Saturday Morning, Neill said it was "absolutely fantastic" to be working again after not having done so for the past year.
He will appear alongside Annette Bening in the upcoming television series Apples Never Fall, based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty.
The plot is centred on a couple who have married for about 40 years when Bening's character suddenly disappears.
"Everyone gradually assumes that I murdered her - and whether or not I did, I am not at liberty to tell you," Neill said.
He plays a "gun tennis player" in the series, which he said greatly amused him "because I can't hit a ball".
"This is a major challenge for someone who's sportingly challenged."
Following that project, Neill said he planned to do some more travel and hoped to reprise his role as Brett Colby in a second series of the Australian television drama The Twelve.
"I enjoyed that character so much, he's the one bloke coming back for the second series."
His performance in the courtroom drama was based, he said, on some barrister friends of his in Christchurch.
"They're wonderful old windbags and I love them dearly."
'A series of marvellous accidents'
After a long and eclectic acting career, Neill said his memoir had reiterated for him just what a surprise his life had turned out to be.
"I grew up in Dunedin and in Dunedin you never really imagined that you would have ... a career on the screen of one kind or another."
Having the actor James Mason champion him early in his career was a life-changing moment.
Mason and his wife invited Neill to stay with them in Switzerland and got him an agent "and suddenly, I had a sort of international career", he said.
"They changed my life."
And while there had been plenty of times in his career when he had no idea what the next job would be, Neill said that was part of the "rollercoaster of being an actor".
"You just don't know where your future lies, so it's both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time."
Actors tended to be "smart, funny, vulnerable, just loveable people", who were "great fun to be at work with" he said, which had helped him to maintain his love of the profession.
"I fell, by a series of marvellous accidents, into what's been a pretty fortunate life and it's been a great surprise to me from beginning to end, really."
