Sam Neill - Did I Ever Tell You This? A Memoir

In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the worlds most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion.

By his own account, his career has been a series of unpredictable turns of fortune. Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, he emigrated to New Zealand at the age of seven. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island, but young Sam was sent away to boarding school in Christchurch, where he was hopeless at sports and discovered he enjoyed acting.

But how did you become an actor in New Zealand in the 1960 and 1970s where there was no film industry? After university he made documentary films while also appearing in occasional amateur productions of Shakespeare. In 1977 he took the lead in Sleeping Dogs, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade, a project that led to a major role in Gillian Armstrongs celebrated My Brilliant Career.

And after that Sam Neill found his way, sometimes by accident, into his own brilliant career. He has worked around the world, an actor who has moved effortlessly from blockbuster to art house to TV, from Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movies to The Piano and Peaky Blinders.

Did I Ever Tell You This? is a joy to read, a marvellous and often very funny book, the work of a natural storyteller who is a superb observer of other people, and who writes with love and warmth about his family. It is also his account of his life outside film, especially in Central Otago where he established Two Paddocks, his vineyard famous for its pinot noir.

Contents

To my children.

I love you and would love to write about you.

But that would be a totally different book

Thanks

To Dr Orly Lavee and all my friends at St Vincents.

I wouldnt have started the book without you.

And I would certainly never have finished it.

To Michael Heyward and everyone at Text Publishing for their unflagging enthusiasm, and all the punctuation.

To everyone who gets a mentionI hope you dont mind.

To everyone who doesnt get a mentionI love you anyway, and Volume II is all about you.

To all my friends who brought me a candle in those dark, dark days.

WHEN my youngest daughter, Elena, was small and at a new school of some kind (I didnt like any of them much), the teacher asked the circle of little children around her, What does your mummy or your daddy do for a job?

The little hands went up in the air and the answers flew thick and fast. My mummys a lawyer. My daddys a countant. My mummy builds houses. And so on.

When it came to Elena, the answer about me was both perceptive and entirely accurate.

My daddy sits in caravans.

Yes, its true. Thats what Ive done much of my life: sit in caravans, or trailers as they say in the USA. Sitting, waiting for someone to tell me what to do, somewhere near a film set. I used to sit and read the paper, or sometimes even the script. Nowadays I stare at my iPhone looking for enlightenmentits never there. Once in a while, theres a knock on the door and the assistant to someones assistant who is an assistant to someone else might kindly ask you if youd like a cup of tea. Of course I would. If youre really lucky they might even bring you lunch, but that would be the assistant to the first assistant who brought you tea. When Elena would visit me at work, that is what I would be doing. Sitting in a trailer, in a car park somewhere, having a cuppa, waiting: her daddy at work.

It doesnt sound like a life well lived, does it? At least its quiet. But, once in a while, someone does say, We need you on set, Mr Neill. And thats when you emerge, blinking, into the daylight. You walk a few metres and spend a few minutes doing what it is you do. Act. Once in a while, with luck, you might even act well.

And, just possibly, you might even go further, walk a few more metres, and actually live some life. That life, as well as that acting, is what this book is about. Theres nothing terribly exceptional about it, but it is mine. I did a little more than sit in trailers. Much of it I found amusing and rewarding. It was all a surprise, this I know. Im far luckier, in hindsight, than I deserved.

But just now I paused for a minute to ponder who exactly Im writing this for. Is this for my children, or their children? Is it for you, perhaps, this reader who might have a passing interest in a common-or-garden screen actor? As a performer, its best if you know your audience. What do they want? What should I give them?

But I dont know who you are. Its hard to get the tone right. How intimate should this be? How jolly, how entertaining, am I required to be? Its a bit baffling.

Then the answer came to me, and it was obvious. I am writing for myself. This may be yet another selfish impulse, and Ive had, Im told, many of those over the years.

The thing is, Im crook. Possibly dying. I may have to speed this up. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I have time to burn, and time to think. And writing, jotting thoughts and memories down, is a salve. It gets my mind off things.

This book is therefore somewhat flung together. I write in haste. You can drop it any time you like if youre bored, but you are welcome to dip in again whenever you want.

In the meantime, Im enjoying it, and I hope you might too. Whoever you are

PERHAPS I should start at the beginning. Lets take a stroll down this windy path and I will point things out as we drift past.

I was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, in 1947. My parents named me Nigel. We were renting a modest Georgian house, Mullaghmore House, just out of Omagh, surrounded by fields, trees, stone walls and donkeys. My father, Dermot, a New Zealander, was in the British Army, and was stationed at the army depot there after the war, and after his time with the occupying forces in Trieste.

Mum and my brother, Michael, had joined Dad in Italy, and they had a very happy year out there. Dad had word from a brother officer that an Austrian cavalry regiment was being disbanded in Vienna. He confiscated an enormous old ambulance, drove over a couple of mountain passes and nicked two outstanding horses, which he ferried back over the alps. Dads job in Trieste was to keep apart the remnants of fascist and communist forces in a region of Italy that has always been in dispute. But mostly he and Mum charged around on horseback, having a great time and conceiving me. Dad claimed the deed was done at the Hotel Danieli, one wet afternoon in Venice. The Danieli was the best hotel in the city, but my parents had no money to speak of, and so I can only imagine that they had some special rate reserved for the occupying forces. Obviously, I was destined for a lifetime of upgrades in five-star hotels.

My mother said that as a baby I developed a fear of strange women, who would coo and pinch my cheeks.

Im not entirely sure Dad was home in Omagh when I was born, because it was about this time that he went to Greece for a year. The Greek Civil War was at its height, and Dad served as adviser to a Greek general in the struggle against the communist insurgents there. Like all of Dads active service, it was never mentioned, though he did tell the story about being stuck up in the mountains surrounded by hostile forces. He and his men were dug in, waiting for reinforcements. To their astonishment they spotted a courier of some kind, hightailing it up the mountain and dodging sniper fire. The messenger arrived safely, and put an important-looking document directly into Dads hands. He opened it and found it was from Lloyds Bank, informing him that he was overdrawn to the tune of two shillings and sixpence, and if the situation was not immediately rectified they would have no choice but to close his account. For the rest of his life Dad would invariably curse whenever passing a branch of said bank.