‘Having a bath with that big ram was scary’
He saw off Jurassic Park’s killer dinosaurs and took on TV’s terrifying Peaky Blinders, so which scene on his latest film had Sam Neill worried?
AT 73, movie star Sam Neill probably thought that scripts requiring him to strip off and soap up a costar were behind him. But in his latest film, he’s required to do precisely that. The co-star in question, though, turns out to be a large curly horned ram, and Sam had nothing but a shower hose and soap brush for protection. It was a nerve-wracking moment for the actor, standing there in his underpants, scrubbing the animal’s face while trying to avoid a headbutt.
“That was a big ram and I was a bit scared,” he laughs now. “I was anxious. But at the point we had to have a bath together, we knew each other pretty well and he was fairly relaxed with me.”
The movie, Rams, is set in a sheep farming community in western Australia, and tells the story of two estranged brothers, played by Neill and Aussie actor Michael Caton, who live on adjacent properties raising two flocks of sheep descended from the same family bloodline.
When one flock becomes infected with a lethal disease, the authorities order a cull.As comedies go, it’s pretty dark.
Having seen the original 2015 Icelandic film on which it was based, Neill nearly turned it down, until he realised the dry humour and distinctly Aussie characters in the remake set it apart.
“The Icelandic film was necessarily somewhat bleak and this is not at all,” he explains. “Yeah, it can be sort of sad and poignant at times, but not bleak.”
Despite its prescient themes – a contagious virus and bush fires both feature – audiences down under have adored it and an awards buzz is already forming.
“People find it’s life-affirming and they feel better afterwards,” Neill says. “It’s been lovely to hear from people saying, ‘Oh I feel so much better’.”
NOT that he felt much better after a gruelling few months spent filming it. The shoot took place back in 2018 and he started three days after he’d finished another film in Britain. “We were going hell for leather to get it done by Christmas,” he says. “I was in every scene so I was pretty exhausted. In between sprinting after sheep and other things, I would go and have a bit of a lie down and a couple of aspirins.” The actor is fully rested now, speaking to me from his organic vineyard in Central Otago on New Zealand’s South Island, where he has been since the start of the pandemic. On display behind him is a shelf of his award-winning Two Paddocks wine, while to the side are verdant green fields of premium vines. Looking far younger than his years, Neill’s languid way of talking and dry humour don’t seem so different from some of his screen personas. When he remarks that the “gruff, solitary bloke in Rams or [his 2016 film] Hunt For The Wilderpeople are extensions of myself”, it’s hard not to agree. Next year we will see him return to the role that made him an A-Lister, Jurassic Park’s Dr Alan Grant for the sixth instalment in the series, Jurassic World: Dominion, along with original cast members Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. “All three of us are called the legacy cast,” he chuckles. “We were really only interested in coming back if our parts were decent and substantial and they are.” He speaks fondly of the reunion with his former colleagues, and working with the younger cast, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Much of the film was made last year in Pinewood Studios, Bucks, under strict Covid regulations.
“It was a privilege and a hell of a lot of fun, and I think the film is going to be a blast,” he says.
Now in his 50th year of acting, Sam has appeared in dozens of pictures, most notably Dead Calm, The Piano, The Hunt For Red October and The Omen III. He seems incredulous about his career milestone, after someone reminded him of it the other day, saying he never thought he would make it as a film actor.
Born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, when he was seven his parents emigrated to New Zealand, where he was sent to boarding school. He changed his name from Nigel to Sam, aged 10, as he found the former an “awkward fit in most circumstances”. He had a stutter in childhood too although there is no hint of that now, aside from the fact he speaks slowly and carefully.
School did give him his first taste of acting and he left university in the early 1970s with a plan to get into the film business. Unfortunately, New Zealand “had very little television and almost no cinema” he tells me, so he survived for the first seven years by making documentary films for the government.
“I became a director, not a terribly good one,” he admits.
He had a brief brush with soap on Australian serial drama The Sullivans. Michael Caton was one of the principal characters at the time, although he has arguably surpassed him in fame and fortune.
Not that Neill would ever admit to that. “Michael will always be my senior and my better,” he says.
His favourite role, in a “visceral sense”, was as Peaky Blinders’ Major Chester Campbell, the Ulster police chief and brutal rapist shot in the heart by Polly Gray (Helen McCory) at the end of series two.
“That was a real stretch,” he says. “My guy in Peaky Blinders was the furthest I have ever played away from anything remotely connected to me – and such a rich, strange and bizarre character who was so nasty and sad and multidimensional.”
He turned to his celebrity friends James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson to help him hone the accent.
“It was an anxiety before I began but once I got it under my belt, it was such a rich accent to get your mouth around. I loved it,” he says.
The show’s fans continually debate whether the character might return in a shock twist. “No, he’s dead and buried,” Neill says, firmly shutting the door.
The star is reported to be single once again after splitting up with his girlfriend of three years, ABC journalist Laura Tingle, although neither of them has spoken about it. He has a son, Tim, by his first wife, Lisa Harrow, a daughter Elena by his second marriage to
‘Peaky Blinders was the furthest I have ever played away from anything connected to me’