Janet Maslin reviewed it in The Times, writing, “Not much about Sam Neill’s ordinary leading-man roles (in films like ‘Jurassic Park’) and even his better ones (in ‘The Piano’ and ‘My Brilliant Career’) is preparation for his tart, perceptive directorial voice in a very good film of his own.”
He reprised his Alan Grant in “Jurassic Park III” (2001) and “Jurassic World Dominion” (2022), and included “The Hunt for Red October” (1990) and “Event Horizon” (1997) among his other action-oriented Hollywood credits.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award for the title part in the 1998 TV mini-series “Merlin.” His other television roles included Thomas Jefferson in “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal” (2000), Cardinal Wolsey in “The Tudors” (2007) and Inspector Chester Campbell, a relentless cop from Northern Ireland, in two seasons of “Peaky Blinders” (2013-14).
Despite his international success, he maintained close ties to New Zealand, spending most of his time in Central Otago, where in 1993 he began making wine under the label Two Paddocks. His wines were generally well regarded by critics, and he attempted to take a democratic approach to pricing, telling The Guardian in 2002, “I’d hate to think my wine was only being drunk by property developers.”
“People are taking the wine seriously,” he told The Australian Financial Review in 2018,” as they should, and that has taken a while. People tend to underestimate actors. They say, ‘He is an actor, what would he know?’”
In recent years, Mr. Neill also became known for an idiosyncratic social media presence, mostly focused around his winery near Clyde, New Zealand, and its animal inhabitants, which were often named after thespians. Over the years, they included a pig named Anjelica Huston, a cow named Helena Bonham Carter and a resplendent cockerel named Michael Fassbender.
