Sam Neill Encourages Fans To “Don’t Worry Too Much” After Sharing That His Cancer Is In Remission: “I Am Alive And Kicking”
Sam Neill is in remission for eight months after a blood cancer diagnosis, but says “he’s doing well” and wishes the headlines focused more on his forthcoming book, which he wrote while undergoing treatment.
The Jurassic Park And Invasion actor initially opened up about his health in an interview with The protector published on Friday, which linked to his new memoir. Released March 21 Did I ever tell you this? was written in just a few months in 2022, while, as Neill wrote, he was “possibly dying.” The book chronicles the Irish-born actor’s Hollywood journey from his beginnings in New Zealand – “where there was no film industry” in the ’60s and ’70s, according to the book’s synopsis – to his time working with Meryl Streep, Isabel Adjani, Jeff Goldblum. , Sean Connery, Steven Spielberg and Jane Campion.
According to the actor, he first discovered he had swollen glands in March last year while doing press for Jurassic World Dominion in Los Angeles. The diagnosis was stage three angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a blood cancer, which he had to treat with chemotherapy within weeks.
Neill told the outlet that he wasn’t afraid of dying at the time and that in the end he “didn’t care”, “but it would annoy me. Because I would really like another decade or two, you know? We’ve already built these beautiful terraces, we have these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be there to see it all grow up. And I have my sweet little grandchildren. I want to see them grow up.”
The interview details that after his first round of chemotherapy didn’t work, the actor tried a new and “very expensive” drug that Neill will use monthly for the rest of his life. He also gets it for free after signing a contract with the pharmaceutical company that guaranteed it was free if he was still alive after the first four months of treatment. After joking that he had “a bit of a lab rat” about him, he shared The protector“I’m not off the hook as such, but there’s no cancer in my body.”
Now the actor says he wishes the headlines focused more on that reality — that he’s “alive and well,” promoting a book and gearing up for a new movie instead of the “slightly tiring” cancer news that preceded the interview . “My news seems to be all over the news right now, and it’s sort of a ‘Cancer! Cancer! Cancer !’ That’s a little exhausting, because as you can see, I’m alive and well and have been in remission for eight months, which feels really good,” he said in an Instagram video posted Saturday, in which Neill responded to posts about his health. “I’m alive and well and I’m going to work.”
The Hunting for Red October star shared that along with the imminent release of his book, he is about to begin filming Apples never fall next to Annette Bening in seven days and is “very happy to be back to work.”
“I wish the headline wasn’t so much ‘that thing,’ because the main thing is that I wrote this book, it’s called ‘Did I Ever Tell You This?'” he continued. And it mentions cancer, because that’s the kind of context I wrote it in. But it wasn’t really my intention to write a book, I had something to do while I was on treatment, and I’m used to going to work and all of a sudden I couldn’t go to work.”
He went on to celebrate the “amazing response” around the book, which he said he was “really nervous” about writing as a new author.
“It gives you an idea of all the crazy things that have happened to me. The tone of the book is one of wonder. I never thought I’d have a career as an actor, let alone an on-screen actor. But that’s what happened and I look back on this life with gratitude, and that’s what the book is about,” he added. “So I hope you enjoy it, and let’s not worry too much about ‘all that,’ because I’m fine.”
!function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {
if (f.fbq) return;
n = f.fbq = function() {n.callMethod ? n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);};
if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.push = n;
n.loaded = !0;
n.version = ‘2.0’;
n.queue = [];
t = b.createElement(e);
t.async = !0;
t.src = v;
s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);
}(window, document, ‘script’, ‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘352999048212581’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);