Hollywood is mourning the loss of another celebrated entertainer with the news of actor Sam Neill’s passing at age 78. Born in Northern Ireland but raised in New Zealand since he was seven, Sam first graced the screen in 1971 and six years later landed his breakout role in the thriller Sleeping Dogs. In 1981, Sam appeared in two of the year’s spookiest supernatural horror films that have gone on to become cult classics: Omen III: The Final Conflict, where he plays the grown-up Damien, aka the Antichrist, with commendable verocity, and Possession, which has Sam completely in the buff and flashing his cock as he turns around.
00:56:58 Sam shows a little bit of everything while he talks to a girl in the hallway. (20 secs)
Another big year for the celeb was 1993. After showing off his bulge in a swimsuit in 1982’s Engima, earning a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in 1983’s Reilly, Ace of Spies, starring in Dead Calm with Nicole Kidman in 1989, and The Hunt for Red October in 1990, Sam’s biggest, most infamous role would be that of Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist at the center of Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park, a franchise he would return to in Jurassic Park III (2001)and Jurassic World: Dominion (2022). But while he stayed clothed and didn’t put the “ass” in Jur-ass-ic, he did put his ass in the Oscar-winning drama The Piano that same year.
Some of his later notable work includes the TV miniseries Merlin (1998), the series Peaky Blinders (2013-2014), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), both Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Love and Thunder (2022) as the actor playing Odin, and the recent Peacock series Apples Never Fall (2024). He kept working while also running a vineyard and serving as a trustee of New Zealand’s National Parks and Conservation Foundation, eventually becoming Sir Sam Neill as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. When he announced he was in remission from a rare form of blood cancer in 2023, we were hopeful he might still return to his skinful beginnings, but now we’ll never get another chance to enjoy Sam in all his glory.
