Sam Neill has died at 78, and Sydney is where he took his final bow

Sam Neill has died in Sydney at 78. The actor best known to much of the world as the man running from velociraptors in Jurassic Park spent more than fifty years moving between art house cinema and full blown blockbusters, and did both with the same quiet, dry charm.

His death has been described as sudden, and it carries a particular sting because Neill had only just told the world he was well. In April, he announced he was cancer free after several years of treatment for blood cancer, a diagnosis he had always spoken about with honesty rather than hiding it away.

Neill's career resists a tidy summary. He was Alan Grant, the palaeontologist thrown into chaos across three Jurassic films, a role that introduced him to entire generations of kids who had no idea he had already spent a decade building a serious career in prestige drama. He played Holly Hunter's husband in Jane Campion's The Piano, a performance that showed a very different register to the one most audiences knew him for. In between there was everything from Peaky Blinders to Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a filmography that never settled into one lane because Neill never seemed interested in staying in one.

Tributes have come quickly and from people who worked alongside him for decades. Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Steven Spielberg, his Jurassic Park co-stars and director, have all spoken about him publicly, alongside Australian names like Nicole Kidman and Toni Collette. The word that keeps coming up in nearly all of it is not talent or longevity, but kindness. The sense that Neill was genuinely well liked by the people who spent the most time with him.

New Zealand and Australia both claim him, and honestly, both have a fair case. He built his career across the Tasman and made Sydney his home in later years, and that dual identity feels fitting for an actor who never seemed to fit neatly into one category anyway.

Rest well, Sam Neill. Thank you for all of it.