Breaking: Actor Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park, dies aged 78

Actor Sam Neill, who starred in My Brilliant Career and Jurassic Park, has died aged 78.

A post made to his social media account on Monday afternoon said he had died in Sydney "surrounded by his family".

"The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free," the statement, posted to Instagram, said.

Neill first rose to fame in the 1977 film Sleeping Dogs, before going on to star in My Brilliant Career, Jurassic Park, The Piano, The Dish and Possession among other films.

He was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s — a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong.

In 2023, Neill revealed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, in early 2022.

He entered remission later that year after a rare anti-cancer drug worked, but needed ongoing infusion treatment.

He announced in April he was cancer-free.

The actor was also knighted in 2022, becoming Sir Sam Neill.

"I said I didn't want the title for 10 or 12 years," he said in 2023.

"Then when I thought I was dying a couple of years ago I thought, 'Oh bugger it, I may as well go out with the title,' so I changed my mind."

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today said Neill "earned a special place in Australian hearts".

"Wry and dry, thoughtful and laconic, Sam fought illness with the same dignity, humour and conviction that gave strength to his every performance," he said in a statement posted to X.

"He will be much mourned and long remembered. May he rest in peace."

Neill's range as an actor was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy Sweet Revenge to chopping off Holly Hunter’s finger in The Piano to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror Event Horizon.

In Omen III: The Final Conflict, he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in The Tudors.

The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film My Brilliant Career, which also introduced Judy Davis.

He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm, a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.

Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s Plenty and — again for Schepisi — in A Cry in the Dark, a film about the sensationalised aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback.

He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 mini-series Merlin and another as narrator of 2017’s Wild New Zealand.

He perhaps achieved his highest level of fame in Jurassic Park, playing palaeontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs.

He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough in the Steven Speilberg directed hit.

His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”

Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for The Lost World: Jurassic Park II in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and Jurassic World: Dominion in 2022.

“It’s probably a little late to learn these things, but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero," he told the Daily News of New York in 2001.

Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of seven. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch.

After college, he took the lead in Sleeping Dogs in 1977 — the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.

Neill’s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in The Hunt for Red October and an investigator in director John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness.

Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.

On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.

His memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film" — a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.

“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment.

"But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends."

ABC/AP