Sam Neill says he’s ‘not afraid of dying’ as he reveals chemotherapy failed to treat his stage-three blood cancer
Sam Neill has insisted that he is not afraid of dying as he battles stage-three blood cancer.
The Jurassic Park star told Australian Story that chemotherapy failed to work, leaving him in a ‘fight for life’ – but that a new experimental drug is now working at fighting off the disease.
Despite the promising news, the 76-year-old knows it won’t last forever. He’s been told by his doctors that one day the drug will stop working – which he says he is ‘prepared for’.
‘I’m not in any way frightened of dying. That doesn’t worry me. It’s never worried me from the beginning, but I would be annoyed,’ the 76-year-old said.
‘I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do. Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.’
Neill also shared pictures from his time undergoing chemotherapy, with the actor hard to recognise without his salt-and-pepper hair and beard.
‘There were times in the last year where I had to look at myself in the mirror and I wasn’t a pretty sight,’ he told the ABC. ‘I was stripped of any kind of dignity.’
Neill first disclosed the news of his illness in his memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This, where he writes in the first chapter that he is ‘possibly dying’.
In an interview with The Guardian, the actor said: ‘The thing is, I’m crook. I may have to speed this up. I found myself with nothing to do.
‘And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘What am I going to do?”
Neill also told the BBC that he began writing his memoir as a distraction and to ‘give me a reason to get through the day’.
The book looks back on the New Zealand actor’s 50-year career on screen, as well as his sudden illness.