Director Gillian Armstrong remembers Late 'Jurassic Park' Actor Sam Neill

Check out the Novelpro Junkie Interview with Gillian Armstrong by clicking HERE 
​(there's a couple of questions on her book-based film "My Brilliant Career")

Australian director and Novelpro Junkie guest, Gillian Armstrong, who gave Sam Neill his breakthrough role in the book-based film My Brilliant Career, mourns his passing. She remembers him as "a smart, gentle, decent, passionate, loyal, and surprisingly funny man."

In her press release in remembrance of Neill, she recalled when both of them rewatched "My Brilliant Career": 


Sam and I rewatched My Bril­liant Career together about eight years ago at a screen­ing of the National Film and Sound Archive’s restored print in Launce­ston. I said: “What are you doing com­ing all the way here?” And dis­covered he was put­ting on a Two Pad­docks tast­ing at a spe­cial Launce­ston wine store. He thought it would be good to kill two birds. (I did go to the event and heard his very eru­dite wine speech.)

Sam watched the film with the packed house and was great after­wards with the enthused audi­ence, send­ing him­self up. Includ­ing his belief that Sybylla def­in­itely shouldn’t have mar­ried Harry, he truly was a bit of a wet blanket!

Later that even­ing we watched the 2019 Aus­tralian elec­tion cov­er­age together in his room. He was so proud of the lovely Laura Tingle, he kept sneak­ing her texts and talk­ing to the TV, dir­ect­ing her to look up more!


Here is how she concluded her remembrance of Neill:


The day before he died I came across a rerun of his epis­ode of The Assembly when he was inter­viewed by aut­istic stu­dents. One of them asked: “What have you learned from your par­ents?” Sam paused for a very long time and teared up, then tried to be kind about his par­ents’ lives. I teared up too. I could see little Nigel (his birth name) stand­ing alone on the train plat­form on his way to board­ing school.

I can’t believe that the very next day he was gone. Now I am really tear­ing up.

He will be missed by so many. Best wishes and love to all his fam­ily.

We finally cracked open the 1998 Neill pinot noir last night and made a toast.

Thank you for being our Harry, and our Sam.


To read the full press release of Gillian Armstrong's remembrance of Sam Neill, click HERE (The Guardian). 

FYI: 
Below is Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg's tribute to the late Sam Neill, in which he thanks Gillian Armstrong—along with several other filmmakers—for recognizing Neill's talent early in his career and casting him:
​

“I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gillian Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.

Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children.

I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him. Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”

​

This is the last time we saw the original main 5 characters from Jurassic Park together on screen…

I just didn’t expect this to be the last time as well… □□ pic.twitter.com/HhXEkGTw2I

— Swrve □ 'Jurassic' News & Content (@SwrveYT) July 15, 2026