Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill gives new health update after cancer diagnosis

Virgin Radio

4 Jul 2024, 11:53

Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill has given fans a brand new health update after revealing his cancer diagnosis. 

The film and TV star revealed in his memoir last year, Did I Ever Tell You This?, that he was diagnosed with stage three blood cancer, called angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in 2022. 

Sam also confirmed at the time that he was cancer free after receiving treatment, and has since reflected on that time in his life, discussing the “grim” experience in a new interview. 

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Speaking to the Herald Sun (via MailOnline), the Peaky Blinders star revealed: “It just meant that every second week it was a case of forget about the weekend because that would be a bit grim.”

“But other than that, it's great to be alive and working and in beautiful places, like York."

When the news of his diagnosis came out, Neill admitted he’d have to take infusions every two weeks for the rest of his life after receiving a rare anti-cancer drug. 

Neill made the decision to share the news with fans after his memoir made headlines for its first chapter, which included the sentence: “The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying.”

Taking to Instagram at the time, the star posted a video, in which he said: “My news seems to be all over the news at the moment, and it’s sort of ‘Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!’, which is slightly tiresome because as you see, I am alive and well and I have been in remission for eight months, which feels really good.”

Neill appeared on Virgin Radio in March 2023 to chat about the book, and insisted the memoir was not about cancer, but simply had cancer in it. 

He told Graham Norton at the time: “It was written under constrained circumstances over a year ago. I was told I had a very bad cancer and I was unable to go to work, so I thought I'd do something in its place. And so I started to write. I was just writing down stories for my kids as much as anything, and then, after a while, that accumulated to the extent that I thought maybe if I extend this a bit, maybe it's a book."

He continued: "And so I wrote for four months, flat out, because I wasn't quite sure how long I had to live. But I survived. And then I sat on it for a couple of months. I asked myself if it was something I wanted anyone to see, but I plucked up my courage, got hold of three publishers that were recommended to me, and they all came back within 24 hours saying, 'we want to publish your book'. So that was sort of kind of heartening. Here we are a year later, I'm still alive and kicking, and then the book is out..."

Graham asked Sam if the cancer diagnosis changed the way he remembered events in his life.

"I think it made me look back," he said. "I never looked back much. There's no point in looking back. But here I had the opportunity to look back, and sort of evaluate where I've been, what mattered to me, and the people I loved and the things that made me laugh, as well as all the ridiculous scrapes I've got myself into. It was an opportunity to sort of reevaluate my life and what's happened."