Sam Neill: Jurassic Park star Sam Neill announces he is being treated for stage three blood cancer

Sam Neill reveals he’s being treated for stage three blood cancer in his upcoming memoir.

“The thing is, I’m a crook. Possibly die,” he writes in the first chapter of the book, did i ever tell you that “Maybe I need to speed this up.”

“I had nothing to do,” The said Jurassic Park star tells The guard in an interview ahead of publication. “And I’m used to working. i love working I like going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all those things. And suddenly I was deprived of it. And I thought, ‘What should I do?’

“I never intended to write a book. But as I went on and kept writing, I realized that actually it gave me a reason to live, and I would go to bed thinking, ‘I’m going to write about this tomorrow… this will entertain me.’ And so it was really a lifesaver because I couldn’t have gotten through this without doing something, you know.

Per The guardNeill first had swollen glands while promoting Jurassic World Dominion in March of last year and was soon diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma.

The 75-year-old actor will be taking chemotherapy drugs for the rest of his life, although he is now cancer-free.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” he said, “but it would annoy me. Because I’d really like to have another decade or two, you know? We’ve built all these beautiful patios, we have these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be there to see how it all matures. And I have my dear little grandchildren. I want to see them grow up.

“But the dying? I do not care at all.”

In conversation with The Independent Last month, Neill ditched the idea of ​​retiring: ‘The idea of ​​quitting my job? Unbearable!

“I love acting. It’s really good for me to keep walking into new sets with young actors and all this stimulation. New words, new ideas, there is nothing like it. I never want to give that up. The thought of retiring, having to play golf, fills me with dread,” he said.

The New Zealand actor spends most of his time on his 12-acre farm and vineyard in his home country, where he raises chickens named after his former colleagues.

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He was born in Northern Ireland in 1947 where his father, an army officer, was stationed at the time before returning to his father’s homeland of New Zealand in 1954.

His international breakthrough came in 1981 when he played a cheated husband in Andrzej Zulawski’s surreal 1981 divorce drama Possession.

Looking back, Neill recounted The Independent he considers Zulawski “a genius, but crazy. He asked so much more of you than you could possibly give. He demanded a lot more than a director should.”

One such request included really slapping his screen wife Isabelle Adjani in the face. “I have to say it was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to do on a movie,” he said.

In 1993, Neill appeared in the role for which he will always be remembered: paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.

He reprized the role in Jurassic Park III (2001) and the final film of the most recent installment in the trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion (2022).

Neill recently said he still gets “a lot of flak” for his accent in the franchise, which is “somewhere in between” his real accent and American, at the request of director Steven Spielberg.