As you probably know by now, we’ve lost Sam Neill. A wonderful actor and, by all accounts, even more wonderful person, Neill was beloved by basically everyone. As the preeminent Jurassic Park expert here, I was an especially big fan of his and wanted to spotlight some great performances of his that you might not have seen.
1. Harry Beecham in My Brilliant Career. Neill plays the main love interest of Sybylla (Judy Davis) in this brilliant (pun not intended) film from Gillian Armstrong. Sybylla is torn between her love for Harry and her desire to have a career and Neill plays Harry brilliantly (again, pun not intended).
2. Mark in Possession. Neill gives one of the greatest horror performances of all time in Andrzej Żuławski’s legendary classic. He plays a spy who learns his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) is seeing another man and seeks to end his marriage. Things go sideways when he learns who (or, more accurately, what) his wife is cheating with. Adjani gets the lion’s share of praise for her performance (and it’s easily a top 10 of all time performance) but Neill is amazing as well.
3. John Ingram in Dead Calm. After the death of their son, John and Rae Ingram (Nicole Kidman) try to take their minds off the tragedy by going on a vacation in their yacht. While on the seas, they spot a lone man on a sinking schooner (Billy Zane) and rescue him. The man, Hughie, proves to be nastier than they realize. Kidman and Zane are the main stars of the movie but Neill’s performance greatly aids the movie.
4. First officer Vasily Borodin in The Hunt for Red October. Neill first made an impact with general audiences with his scene stealing performance here. Vasily is one of the many crew members on the Red October who wishes to defect to the U.S. He’s one of the more memorable characters in the movie (and Neill’s accent is better than Sean Connery’s).
5. Eugene Fitzpatrick in Until the End of the World. Neill isn’t the top-billed actor in Wim Wenders’ tragically underseen sci-fi epic but he’s one of the most important characters as Eugene Fitzpatrick, the ex-lover of female lead Claire (Solveig Dommartin). Neill narrates the film as it follows Claire traveling the world (literally, they shot this movie in ten different countries on four different continents) after a world-altering catastrophe. Neill gives the most underrated performance in a very underrated movie.
6. Alisdair Stewart in The Piano. A few months before Jurassic Park premiered, Neill starred in Jane Campion’s magnum opus. A far cry from his performance in My Brilliant Career, Neill plays Ada’s (Holly Hunter) monstrous husband. A boor of a man who mistreats his wife and hates the local Māori tribe (ironic considering Neill’s support of aboriginal rights in real life). One of Neill’s more terrifying performances, especially the scenes where he attempts to assault Ada and later severs one of her fingers.
7. John Trent in In the Mouth of Madness. I once described John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness as the most underrated horror movie ever but it and Neill’s performance in it are finally starting to get the recognition they deserve. John Trent is an insurance fraud investigator who is tasked with finding missing horror author Sutter Cane. Trent finds himself in a surreal horror zone while trying to find Cane. Neill anchors the movie with a performance that could have easily been overly hysterical.
8. Dr. William Weir in Event Horizon. One of the more divisive movies of the last 50 years. It’s either an underrated masterpiece or pretentious nonsensical bullshit. It’s on this list, so you can guess that I lean towards the former. Neill plays Dr. Weir, a space ship engineer who designed the title haunted ship. He’s still nursing the pain of losing his wife to suicide, which the ship is all too happy to exploit. Neill gives one of the most terrifying line reads ever in here, with “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.”
9. Cliff Buxton in The Dish. The last few movies were heavy, so I’m going to highlight a light yet still great performance in a very underrated movie. In The Dish, Neill plays Cliff Buxton, the director of the Parkes radio telescope facility which helped broadcast the moon landing in 1969… and is in the middle of a sheep paddock. The movie follows Buxton getting the preparations in store for the eventful broadcast. The movie plays fast and loose with history but it’s still a charming movie and is more true than you would think (it actually is in the middle of a sheep paddock).
10. Uncle Hector in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Neill plays the foster “uncle” of Ricky (Julian Dennison, future star of Deadpool 2 and Godzilla vs. Kong). He’s initially ambivalent towards the kid until his wife dies and, not wanting to return to the foster system, Ricky tries (key word: tries) to fake his death. Hector follows him into the woods but gets injured, forcing Ricky to have to take care of him. All the while, everyone else thinks Hector has abducted Ricky. Neill and Dennison have amazing chemistry, very similar to the chemistry between Neill and young Joseph Mazzello in Jurassic Park. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is one of the last movies directed by Taika Waititi before he completely disappeared up his own ass, so erase the memories of Thor: Love and Thunder and Next Goal Wins from your minds.
R.I.P. Sam Neill. Jurassic Park was one of the movies that helped kickstart my love of the medium and I don’t know if I’d be where I am now if it wasn’t for that movie and everyone involved with it.