Sam’s still one of the wilder people
He’s just turned 70, and is winning critical acclaim all over the world, but don’t expect Sam Neill to start acting his age.
A few days out from from tomorrow’s Emmy Awards, where he’s nominated in the outstanding narrator category for his work on documentary series Wild New Zealand, the Kiwi actor showed he was still capable of poking fun at himself.
Neill posted a clip of himself dancing on a deserted beach as he thanked fans for their birthday wishes.
Then in a separate online post he uploaded a photo of himself wearing a giant bush on his head.
‘‘People still worried about the conditioner I was using in 2016? Relax. I am now using recycled frying all from McDonalds w excellent results,’’ he wrote.
Neill is just back from the Venice Film Festival where Australian western Sweet Country, in which he stars alongside Aussie screen veteran Bryan Brown, took out the special jury prize.
‘‘It was an august and grand occasion ... Then these two old mongrels showed up,’’ he wrote in a post above a picture of himself and Brown grinning mischievously.
The Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Jurassic Park actor shows no signs of slowing down. He’s currently filming and we’ll get to see him in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok in just a few weeks’ time.
Somehow, he still finds time to run his central Otago vineyard and farm, populated by animals named after such famous faces as Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep. A recent post of a sow (named after British actress Imogen Poots) and her five piglets was captioned ‘‘no question @TaikaWaititi is the father’’. Another pig, incidentally, is named after the Kiwi director. A win tomorrow would be a chance to outdo that video clip of his celebrations for his 70th, where he runs towards the ocean, arms waving. ‘‘This is an idiot [me] celebrating getting this far,’’ he wrote.