- Sam Neill is in remission
- THIS is what he had to say about his cancer fight
- He'll be back on screen soon
Every two weeks, Neill gets infusions of a drug that his tumor has been responding to well...for now. He'll keep doing this indefinitely, until the treatment inevitably stops working, Neill, 76, revealed in a 30-minute documentary released Monday for the 'Australian Story' program.
"I know I’ve got it, but I’m not really interested in it," Neill said. "It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get into it. It's like going 10 rounds with a boxer, but it's keeping me alive, and being alive is infinitely preferable to the alternative," Neill said.
Sam Neill is a real inspiration
"I'm not, in any way, frightened of dying. It's never worried me from the beginning. But I would be annoyed because there are things I still want to do," he said. "Very irritating, dying. But I'm not afraid of it." But Sam has been warned by doctors that his cancer treatment drug will stop working at some point, the actor confessed, as he provided further insight into how he has been dealing with his condition.
Earlier this year, the 'Jurassic Park' star released his memoir 'Did I Ever Tell You This?', in which he revealed that he was being treated for angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. At the time, Neill shared that he had originally undergone chemotherapy, but that the cancer had soon stopped responding. He then went onto an experimental anti-cancer drug.
In a new interview, Neill, 76, shared that he’d upped his dosage of the "grim and depressing" drug from once a month to every two weeks. However, he said, he has now been in remission for 12 months. The father of four learned he had cancer after finding lumps in his neck while promoting 'Jurassic World: Dominion' in 2022. His lifelong friend, actor Bryan Brown, suggested Neill might have gotten COVID on a plane only for Neill to get a definitive blood test.
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Still fighting
"A day or two later he rang me, and he said, ‘I’ve got cancer.’ And that was the start of it," Brown told 'Australian Story.' "He wasn’t hysterical or anything like that. He dealt with it pretty well just straight on, ‘this is what I’ve got to deal with now. Let’s get on with it.’"
Sam has always been resilient, even at the start of his career when things didn't always go his way. But his fight with cancer has been truly inspirational. "There were times in the last year where I had to look at myself in the mirror, and I wasn't a pretty sight," Neill said. "I was stripped of any kind of dignity."
"I was in, really, a fight for my life," he said. Before doctors found a treatment that was effective against Neill's aggressive tumor, the actor was "just bones and skin," as his son said. "I could barely hug him."
But he will be back to what he does best: entertaining audiences. Sam has many projects on the go, including the TV mini-series 'Apples Never Fall', and the thriller 'Bring Him To Me' which is set to debut in theatres in 2024.
Get ready to see Sam on the big screen again!
