Sam Neill died Monday in Sydney, Australia at the age of 78. His family posted the announcement on his Instagram page, the same account he had used for years to share photos of his New Zealand farm animals, many of them named after celebrity friends.
"It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing," the statement read, using the Māori word for extended family. "Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free."
Neill had been diagnosed with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer, which he disclosed in his 2023 memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?
He had been on chemotherapy since, calling it "a pretty miserable business, but it was keeping me alive." In April 2026, he announced he was cancer free following participation in Australian clinical trials.
His family confirmed he was still cancer free when he died Monday. No cause of death has been released.
Born in Northern Ireland in 1947 and raised in New Zealand from the age of seven, Neill spent more than five decades working across film, television and theater.
He is best known as Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park in 1993, a role he reprised in Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World Dominion, but his range extended to The Piano, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, Peaky Blinders, and dozens of other productions across every genre the industry offered. He was knighted by New Zealand in 2022.
He said retirement filled him with horror. He never retired. He is survived by four children and eight grandchildren.
"It's been a very happy, surprising life," he told CNN in 2023. "I never expected to have a career in film at all. But it kind of happened, and no one's more surprised than me."