{"id":139371,"date":"2026-07-15T22:43:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jurassic-park-actor-sam-neill-died-from-pneumonia-agent-says\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T22:43:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:43:40","slug":"jurassic-park-actor-sam-neill-died-from-pneumonia-agent-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jurassic-park-actor-sam-neill-died-from-pneumonia-agent-says\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Jurassic Park’ actor Sam Neill died from pneumonia, agent says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FILE
FILE – Sam Neill arrives at the premiere of "Apples Never Fall" on March 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span>(Photo by Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Actor Sam Neill<\/a> died from pneumonia and will be honored at a private family memorial at his New Zealand farm later, his agent told The Associated Press on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Neill’s family had earlier announced the actor known for \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d \u201cThe Piano\u201d and other films died Monday in Sydney.<\/p>\n

His agent Philip Grenz said he was providing more information after speaking with Neill’s family and following news reports \u201cwhich contain inaccuracies and outright falsehoods,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

“Sam passed away from pneumonia,” Grenz said. \u201cPrior to becoming sick, Sam had valiantly fought and beaten lymphoma through a new treatment called CAR-T therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Neill had filmed four projects \u201cback-to-back\u201d during the past year that are due to be released in the coming months.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Sam was an intensely private man who loathed a fuss, his family will honor him with a private family memorial at his farm in New Zealand at a still-undetermined later date,\u201d Grenz said.<\/p>\n

The New Zealand actor disclosed in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and said in April this year that he was cancer-free. CAR-T therapy is a form of immunotherapy based on an individual’s T cells and is used for several types of blood cancer.<\/p>\n

His agent’s statement followed days of tributes<\/a> to Neill from film industry colleagues who remembered him as a kind, witty and curious man.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are so loved and will be sorely missed by us all,\u201d director Taika Waititi, who directed Neill in 2016’s \u201cHunt for the Wilderpeople\u201d \u2014 one of Neill’s best-loved films in New Zealand \u2014 wrote on Instagram on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove you and see you soon, sweet Nigel,” Waititi wrote, referring to Neill’s birth name, which he told interviewers he had changed to Sam at school because there were too many Nigels in his class.<\/p>\n

\u201cSam was exceptionally collaborative,” said Steven Spielberg, who helmed the first \u201cJurassic Park\u201d<\/a> movie, in which Neill played paleontologist Alan Grant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI adored making all the Jurassic movies with him,\u201d Spielberg said in a statement. “Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neill was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s. In New Zealand, he has been mourned as a friendly, unassuming person who shunned celebrity and contributed to causes and community projects near his home, according to local news outlets.<\/p>\n

Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand\u2019s South Island.<\/p>\n

He is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\"FILE
FILE – Actor Sam Neill poses at the premiere of "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 22, 2016, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Danny Moloshok\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span>(Photo by Danny Moloshok\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FILE – Sam Neill arrives at the premiere of "Apples Never Fall" on March 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP, File)(Photo by Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP, File) WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Actor Sam Neill died from pneumonia and will be honored at a private family memorial at his New Zealand farm later, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-139371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139371"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=139371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}