Diving into Sam’s story is rather therapeutic … Orwell taught us about economy and so does Sam in a eclectic ways too … Sam was not born with a silver spoon 🥄
Malchkeoun and I slept with Laura and Sam at the “99 acres” during the recent BYRON Bay Writers Festival (but in separate bedrooms) [ It is a figure of speech as Patrice Newell does not know that we often go to sleep with Phillip Adams - and his LNL radio show 😇 ]
Looks like Sam aka Nigel lived in “sin” with Louise W. as they bought a house together at Eastbourne. ‘We smoked Dope and drank dreadful wines. . . Everyone liked gardening.’
Louise “was kind to me, cooked better than me and was a better person than me. It was clearly doomed …”
Driving Mirror Minor with a rusty floor was risqué, but Sam’s flared trousers kept the wet road from spraying widely in the car…
Many positive references are made about John O’Shea - who was a splendid figure, a large florid man…John was a great pioneer of NZ 🎞 🎥 film - Rory take notice …
Sam Neill’s ‘accidental’ memoir is a real charmer – just like the man himself
I’ve always thought that Sam Neill was terribly miscast in My Brilliant Career(1979), the film that effectively launched his. If I’ve read it right, we’re supposed to be cheering when Judy Davis’ Sybylla finally declines his marriage proposal, believing it would inhibit her planned future as a writer
Celebrity doesn’t impress him much, and he’s studiously avoided it. In his local village of Clyde, the one-cop town five minutes from his farm where he gets morning coffee, heads don’t turn much. In Sydney’s Surry Hills, where he has a home and splits his time, he takes delight in telling people who think they might know who he is that he’s Matrix actor Hugo Weaving. He likes to talk to strangers; he doesn’t care if they know who he is or not.
“I have a number of friends who are real celebrities, you’d know who they are, and I wouldn’t swap my life for theirs for a moment, even though they’re immensely rich and, you know, immensely famous.
“There’s a complete lack of privacy for one thing, and privacy is very, very, very important, I can walk down the street in Surry Hills and get my coffee, and nobody bothers me, you know? And there’s no paparazzi. My life is my own.”
There’s Laura Dern (chicken), Kylie Minogue (duck), Helena Bonham Carter (cow), Bryan Brown (pig, female). During this interview, Bryce Dallas Howard, a resplendent ginger hen,pecks her way past and later Michael Fassbender, a rooster of regal bearing appears chest-first around a corner followed closely by three hens. “Fassbender, you big cock,” Neill laughs. “He’s so full of himself, he’s always got his girls following. But he is very handsome.”
In Did I Ever Tell You This? Neill shares quite a bit more of himself. Indeed he has laid himself quite bare and, like most actors awaiting the reviews, he wants to know how he did. As memoirs go, it is very funny and extremely entertaining, but with a judicious touch of poignancy. No self-pity here. He is an enormously good raconteur and also deliciously indiscreet in some of his tale-telling (co-stars behaving badly, take note). But still, he is careful with his private life. Details of past relationships are either omitted, as in the case of his most recent relationship with the Canberra press gallery journalist Laura Tingle, or referred to fleetingly as with his marriages to actor Lisa Harrow and to film makeup artist Noriko Watanabe. His four children and eight grandchildren appear as careful references to his life’s joy and great love.
It is a collection of actor’s stories, a story of family and friendships, of love and pleasure that he started jotting down while isolated in his Sydney flat having treatment for his cancer. The shock came in March last year: he had swollen glands while he was in Los Angeles doing press for Jurassic World Dominion, goofing around with his “idiot friends”. Within weeks he was in chemotherapy for stage three blood cancer, specifically, angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma.
Sam Neil: ‘I’m a solitary single man
Family:
Spouse/Ex-: Lisa Harrow (M. 1978–1989), Noriko Watanabe (M. 1989–2017)
Father: Dermot Neill
Mother: Priscilla Neill
Children: Elena Neill, Tim Neill
Sam Neill was born on 14th September 1947 in Omagh, Northern Ireland as Nigel John Dermot Neill. His father Dermot Neill, a New Zealander, was an army officer stationed in Northern Ireland. His mother, Priscilla Beatrice, was an English woman.
In 1954, when he was seven, his family moved to New Zealand where he went to Christ's College, a boarding school in Christchurch. It was in school, that he changed his name to Sam because there were many other students named Nigel there.
Growing up, Sam Neill never thought of making a career in films. Instead, he contemplated joining army. As a youngster, he also suffered from stammering issue.
After school, he joined the University of Canterbury and Victoria University to pursue studies in English Literature. At Canterbury, he first got into acting.
Sam Neill has had two marriages. He has a son, Tim from his first marriage to actress Lisa Harrow (1980-1989) and a daughter, Elena, from his second marriage to make-up artist Noriko Watanabe (1989- separated in 2017).
He also has another son, Andrew, from a relationship in his twenties and a stepdaughter Maiko Spencer (Watanabe’s daughter from her previous marriage).
In 1993, Sam Neill established a wine producing company Two Paddocks in Central Otago, New Zealand. He owns four small organic vineyards which primarily produce pinot noir and a little bit of riesling. The products are sold in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
BookTok is Good, Actually: On the Undersung Joys of a Vast and Multifarious Platform
Lit Hub – Leigh Stein Wonders Why More Book People Don’t Embrace the Publishing Juggernaut. “Shallow, fake, showy, and performative—these are a few of the adjectives used to describe BookTok, the corner of TikTok where young women share and discuss books on camera, by drive-by tourists to a culture they don’t understand. I’m no BookTok tourist. I’ve lived here for nine months.
