Gillian Armstrong remembers Sam Neill: ‘I can’t believe the next day he was gone’ | Sam Neill

What can I say? I am shocked and sad. He had just undergone cancer treatment and was finally free. And bang! He’s gone. But what wonderful, heartfelt greetings from everywhere.

Yes, Sam was a great actor, in many films, in many roles. Broken, dry, evil, cheeky, damaged and extremely heroic. Even my grandson knows that guy with the dinosaurs. I loved him having fun as that scheming, handsome, grey-haired lawyer in The Twelve.

Our real Sam? He was a little shy. And a smart, kind, respectful, passionate, loyal and surprisingly funny guy. (Probably not the best YouTube singer or named pig!)

Thanks to Steven Spielberg for thanking me, Roger Donaldson, Graham Baker, and Philip Noyce for casting Sam for the first time and showing him to the world. I couldn’t be prouder of Sam’s performance in our little film, the unexpected power of its international release at Cannes and his subsequent stardom.

We were all young and naive. It was clear from day one that the camera loved him. And I still love him in our film, especially the pillow fight that he and Jodi improvised in rehearsals – we made it longer.

I only recently asked Sam why he didn’t come to Cannes with us. Guess what: He had a small role on the TV show The Sullivans, so he didn’t get to make it to that famous French red carpet. But he stood on many red carpets after that, receiving many well-deserved awards and amazing co-stars.

Sam and I re-watched My Brilliant Career together about eight years ago during a screening of the restored version at the National Film and Sound Archive in Launceston. I said, “What are you doing coming here?” He discovered he was tasting Two Baddocks at a private wine shop in Launceston. He thought it would be a good idea to kill two birds. (I went to the event and listened to his knowledgeable talk about wine.)

Sam watched the film with a packed house, and was great afterwards with the enthusiastic audience, sending himself up. Including his belief that Sibilla should definitely not marry Harry, he was truly a wet blanket!

Later that evening we watched coverage of the 2019 Australian election together in his room. He was so proud of the beautiful Laura Tingle, he kept sneaking into her text messages and talking to the TV, directing her to look for more!

In the excellent New York Times article about Sam, I read a quote that would have really made him laugh, taken from Carrie Rickey’s 2019 essay on my brilliant career for the Criterion Collection: “I found Neil particularly attractive, lovingly and persistently portrayed in this film. In other words, like a girl in most films. In retrospect, I realize that this was an early experience for me of seeing a male object of lust through a female director’s eyes.”

There you are, Sam. I have unconsciously made you into a lustful being!

My lustful object has always been incredibly loyal and generous to the film and to me, recognizing it as the beginning of its beginnings. He sent me some of his articles about making My Brilliant Career to check out while he was writing his funny and moving memoir. In Sam the Joker style, he initially called me via FaceTime and I was shocked to see this strange person with a completely bald head and a smiling face. But I recognized that chuckle immediately.

At that point none of us knew we had cancer. Good on him for using that momentum to write that memoir. It was a well deserved hit.

The day before he died, I watched a rerun of his episode of “The Assembly” when he was interviewed by autistic students. One of them said: What did you learn from your parents? Sam paused for a long time and cried, then tried to be nice about his parents’ lives. I cried too. I could see little Nigel (his birth name) standing alone on the train platform on his way to boarding school.

I can’t believe that the next day he was gone. Now I’m really tearing up.

He will be missed by many. Best wishes and love to all his family.

We finally opened up the 1998 Neill Pinot Noir last night and gave a toast.

Thank you for being our Harry and Sam.