Sam Neill

Biography

Before the advent of Russell Crowe, Sam Neill was the only New Zealand film star of worldwide note. And it's fair to assume that - given his extraordinary consistency, his unerring ability to play loveable action heroes, psychotic authoritarians, damaged everymen and even the Antichrist himself - Neill will still be around when Crowe is known only as that Roman general with the disappearing dog.

Neill's career has been long, remarkably varied, and marked - like that of Geoffrey Rush - by a loyalty to the Antipodean film industry that made him. He was born Nigel Neill on the 14th of September, 1947. His dad, Dermot, was a third-generation New Zealander, whose family ran Neill And Co, one of the biggest booze wholesalers on the islands. Like many of the Neills, Dermot was a military man (it's rumoured that his great-granddad helped burn down the White House in 1812). He'd attended Harrow in the UK, then Sandhurst military academy, where he met his wife, an Englishwoman named Priscilla. They bore one son, Michael, then were stationed in Northern Ireland, in Omagh, where Nigel and a further daughter were born. In 1954, the family returned to New Zealand, Dermot moving into the family business.

It was in New Zealand that Nigel became Sam. There were a fair few Nigels at school in Dunedin, and it wasn't a good name to have - "a little effete for the rigours of a New Zealand playground", recalls Neill, who also stammered at the time. He got the nickname Sam, and clung to it. He attended the Anglican boys' school Christ College, in Christchurch, studied conscientiously, and won a place at Canterbury University, studying English. He'd always been interested in film, recalling being first affected by Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, but here he began to involve himself in Drama. He took no formal acting classes, he was just good at it and interested in the whole process, and was encouraged by both his teachers and famous novelist Dame Ngaio Marsh, who put on a Shakespeare production each year.