Sam Neill death latest: Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg leads tributes to ‘exceptionally collaborative’ actor

Laura Dern has paid tribute to her late Jurassic Park co-star Sam Neill with an emotional statement.

She told People: “Sam was my beloved lifetime friend… He showed me the depths of loyalty, protectiveness and love always with the driest of wit.

“He was a true and noble gentleman, wrapped up in my dream leading man. I will love you forever, Dr. Alan Grant.”

Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg has added his voice to the many tributes to Sam Neill, writing in a social media post:

“I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.

“Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him.

“Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”

When Sam Neill was cast as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, the character was supposed to be American.

But on the first day of shooting, Neill, who had spent a month perfecting the accent, was instructed by Spielberg to ditch it in favour of his own New Zealand voice.

“He came up to me halfway through the day and he said, ‘Hey, Sam, you know the accent we were talking about?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been working on it for four weeks.…’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just use your own voice,’” Neill told Vanity Fair.

“I said, ‘That’s great, Steven, thank you so much.’ And then four days later, he came up to me and said, ‘You know that voice you’re using now?’ I said, ‘Yeah, my voice?’ He said, ‘Somewhere in between.’

“It’s an actor’s nightmare!” Neill said. “So that’s why I get a lot of flak to this day: Sam Neill’s American accent in Jurassic Park was a load of T-rex poo.”

Nicole Kidman was only 18 when she met Sam Neill, who she says “took me under his wing”. They remained friends for life.

“Sam was one of the greats, a joy to be around,” she said in tribute. “He was charming, kind, funny and intelligent. He will be greatly missed, and my heart goes out to his family.”

They co-starred in the 1994 thriller Dead Calm.

Sam Neill’s Bond audition has resurfaced in the wake of his death.

The actor was in the running to replace Roger Moore as 007 – and in his last interview before his death, he said: “I suspect I would have done it – because I was bullied into doing the bloody screen test by my agent, Margaret – God rest her soul.”

He told The Guardian: “I’m also aware that I wouldn’t have enjoyed my life so much if I was an ex-Bond. That’s what people would say when I went for my morning coffee. “Look – it’s what’s-his-name, who used to be James Bond?” “Yeah, he was the one I never really liked.”

Sam Neill’s reaction shot to seeing a dinosaur for the first time is one of Spielberg’s greatest film moments.

Neill once recalled about shooting the scene: “Steven said, ‘Look over there and imagine there’s a whole plain of grazing dinosaurs of all different stripes and persuasions – how would you feel about that?’ And I said, ‘Oh s***, I don’t know Steven, I think I’d faint.’ That’s why my knees go in the shot.”

The actor will appear in two films, posthumously: monster movie sequel Godzilla x Kong: Supernova andThe Last Resort, a romantic comedy starring Daisy Ridley and Alden Ehrenreich. He plays the father of Ridley’s character.

Sam Neill requested that the Australian flag on his character’s uniform in futuristic horror Event Horizon remove the Union Flag from the corner and have it replaced with the Aboriginal flag.

Confirming this detail in 2020, the actor wrote: “This is indeed so. And I wouldn’t do it any differently today.”