Veteran actor Sam Neill’s former partner, Australian political journalist Laura Tingle, has opened up about his final days, revealing that the actor had become “pretty sick” in the weeks before his death despite being declared cancer-free earlier this year.Neill died on Monday at the age of 78. He had announced in April that he was free of cancer after battling angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare form of blood cancer.
Laura Tingle recalls Sam Neill’s final days
Speaking on Sydney Mornings with host Hamish Macdonald, Tingle, who dated Neill from 2018 to 2021 after his separation from wife Noriko Watanabe, reflected on the actor’s long health battle.“He’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years intensively. And that takes a toll on anybody’s body,” she said.Explaining how the years of treatment had affected him, Tingle added, “He’d had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy and, thankfully, it had finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he’d had, but it left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system and I think his poor body sort of got a bit exhausted, as makes sense.”She continued, “So, he’s been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks and everybody who loved him has been willing him on, from near and far. But, I think, it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time.”
‘He loved to work’
Tingle also reflected on Neill’s passion for acting, recalling comments he made during his 2023 interview on Australian Story, where he admitted he wasn’t afraid of dying but would be “annoyed” because he still had so much left to do.“I think that was definitely where he was,” she said. “He loved to work. He was largely defined by being on a movie set. He used to say, ‘I’m addicted to working.’ And I think he was.”She added that acting became central to Neill’s identity after he unexpectedly found his way into the profession.“When he, by his own admission, fell into acting, that sort of sense of being always on the move, always becoming somebody else, was just such a large part of who he was,” Tingle said. “And he was so good at it.”
Family remembers the actor
Following his death, Neill’s family shared a heartfelt statement, revealing that he died surrounded by loved ones.“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” the statement read.“The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free. They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”Best known for his performances in Jurassic Park, Merlin and numerous acclaimed film and television projects, Neill is survived by his four children, eight grandchildren and a legacy that has been celebrated by colleagues including Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Cillian Murphy and Steven Spielberg.