Scientists, farmers, spies, cops, priests, the devil incarnate: is there any role Sam Neill can’t play? The New Zealand actor has been delivering cracking performances for more than four decades and, after returning to screens in Untamed and the third season of The Twelve, shows no signs of slowing down. Here are his 20 all-time greatest performances.
20. Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983)
This is the Neill performance that’ll make you think: hot damn, he could’ve made a great James Bond. In this UK TV series he plays a Russian spy who works for the Brits; he is a devil with the ladies; and he scrubs up great in a tux: tick tick tick. The show is adapted from Robin Bruce Lockhart’s 1967 book Ace of Spies, and its titular character based on Sidney Reilly, a real-life spy who was executed by the Soviets in 1925.
19. The Hunt for Red October (1990)
It couldn’t have been easy to hold your own against Sean Connery. But in John McTiernan’s deep sea blockbuster, Neill delivers a thoroughly engrossing supporting performance as Vasily Borodin, the second-in-command to Connery’s Capt Marko Ramius, a Soviet who defects to the US. Borodin is pragmatic and process-driven but embroiled in dangerously volatile circumstances.
18. The Tudors (2007-10)
In this glamorous and racy series set in 16th-century England, Neill plays Henry VIII’s most trusted adviser, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He’s a man of the cloth, who clearly enjoys being referred to as “your eminence”, but is also a cunning and calculating powerbroker who doesn’t like getting his hands dirty. Staying on the king’s good side is easier said than done, as is surviving in this world; let’s just say Wolsey doesn’t appear in the second season.
17. Sweet Country (2017)
Everybody brings their A game to Warwick Thornton’s sumptuously shot neo-western, one of the greatest Australian films of the century to date. Neill plays a preacher, Fred Smith, who’s a little pious but walks the walk – following Bryan Brown’s sergeant on his mission to track down an Aboriginal man accused of murder (Hamilton Morris) because “I want to see him come back alive”. It’s not a huge performance but it’s beautifully balanced. Tender yet tough.
16. The Dish (2000)
Rob Sitch’s pleasant historical drama is based on the true story of the Parkes Observatory, which helped Nasa track and broadcast Apollo 11’s voyage to the moon. Neill plays Cliff, the observatory’s mild-mannered but intensely focused director. It’s a warm, fully rounded performance that takes an avuncular tone, complete with a face-stretching smile and pipe hanging from his mouth.
15. The Piano (1993)
Initially Neill’s character in Jane Campion’s Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece seems relatively fair-minded, playing the new husband of Holly Hunter’s famously mute protagonist, Ada. That changes in the final act, when he violently responds to discovering Ada’s love affair with a retired sailor (Harvey Keitel), tipping the film into nightmarish terrain. It’s broodingly dark and poetic, and all the performances are great.
14. Daybreakers (2009)
The ol’ vampire villain is given a modern, corporate makeover in the Spierig brothers’ revisionist genre movie, in which Neill plays Charles Bromley, the chief executive of the largest supplier of blood in the US. In this world, most humans have become vamps, leading to a massive blood shortage that Bromley’s determined to exploit. Neill gives him a monstrously large impact, with an air of menacing sophistication. In one memorable scene he elegantly quaffs a lovely glass of red – and no, it’s not wine.
13. Death in Brunswick (1990)
In this classic Australian black comedy Neill plays Carl, a manchild who sleeps in late, rarely washes his clothes (he rarely washes anything) and lives in a grubby broken-down house. He does, however, scrub up pretty well in a black leather jacket. The plot kicks into gear when Carl – a two-bit chef at a dingy club – accidentally kills a drug dealer and sets off a gangland war. Neill makes him a little blase and aloof, and pitiable in some ways – but he is also his own worst enemy.
12. The Omen: The Final Conflict (1981)
An adult Damien Thorn is a role that could so easily have tipped into evil cartoonishness. But Neill is devilishly good in The Omen’s second sequel, imbuing the protagonist with a disquietingly calm and serpentine presence. Thorn’s smile stretches a little too wide, and something funny’s going on with his eyes; he seems to look through people. The film can be a little goofy, stuffed to the gills with talk of prophecies and end times, but it builds a genuinely creepy psychological space.
11. My Brilliant Career (1979)
Gillian Armstrong’s superb adaptation of Miles Franklin’s classic feminist novel is centred around Judy Davis’s great performance as the bull-headed protagonist Sybylla Melvyn, an aspiring author who dreams of something greater than a rural life as a wife. Her primary love interest is Neill’s Harry Beecham: a man of the world with a polite, dignified way about him that takes on extra layers as the role deepens. Harry is swoon-worthy but Sybylla is no pushover, twice rejecting his hand in marriage.
10. Merlin (1998)
What a spunky wizard! Neill cuts a charismatic presence as the lead in this two-part miniseries about the mythic middle ages magician, giving the role dramatic weight but also leaning into the story’s fairytale-like elements. The special effects of course have dated but the production holds up surprisingly well, with an appealingly old-timey spirit of adventure.
9. Event Horizon (1997)
Critics have never been kind to Paul Anderson’s gruesome sci-fi about a team of astronauts who land on a ship that haunts people with their deepest fears but it’s a cracking movie. Neill’s role as the ship’s designer, Dr William Weir, begins in geeky scientist mode but becomes a berserk reinvention of the mad scientist trope. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see,” says Weir, around the time he literally opens the gates of hell. Good times.
8. Possession (1981)
Cranked to 11? Dowsed in petrol, then set on fire? No string of words, however sensational, can capture the balls-to-the-wall spirit of Neill’s ghoulish performance in Andrzej Żuławski’s cult classic. Nor the qualities of the film itself – a bizarre combination of relationship drama and Grand Guignol spectacle. Neill plays Mark, a spy who returns home to West Berlin and discovers that his wife (Isabelle Adjani) wants a divorce; it might have something to do with a bedroom kink involving an tentacled alien.
7. Rams (2020)
Neill has never been more huggable than in Jeremy Sims’ remake of the Icelandic drama of the same name, in which he stars as Colin, a hardy and empathetic sheep farmer. He really, really loves his flock, though such affection does not extend to his crotchety brother Les (Michael Caton), who lives next door. The pair haven’t spoken in years but that might change when a rare disease infects their animals.
6. Evil Angels (1988)
Titled A Cry in the Dark outside Australia and New Zealand, Fred Schepisi’s drama about the trial of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain arrived in Australian cinemas with white-hot topicality, just six weeks after their convictions for murdering their daughter Azaria were quashed. Both lead performances are hauntingly powerful, with Neill starring opposite Meryl Streep as Michael, a holier-than-thou pastor who questions his faith when the trial puts them through the wringer.
5. Peaky Blinders (2013-22)
Cillian Murphy’s gangster Tommy Shelby and his gang of “Peaky Blinders” find themselves in an existential fight for survival when Neill’s hotshot chief inspector Maj Campbell arrives in town, sent from Belfast to clean up the streets and retrieve stolen weapons. It’s a deliciously entertaining performance with plenty of chest-thumping dialogue, and sizzling chemistry with Murphy.
4. Jurassic Park (1993)
Who could forget Neill’s palaeontologist, Dr Alan Grant, gawking at a Brachiosaurus while John Williamson’s beautiful score swells? This moment from Jurassic Park demonstrates how special effects can evoke wonder, rather than just fill the frame with bling. There are a couple of other scientist characters in the Jurassic Park franchise but it was Grant who got his own film (Jurassic Park 3).
3. Dead Calm (1989)
For a large chunk of Phillip Noyce’s white-knuckle thriller, Neill’s navy officer John is alone on a sinking ship, with nobody to share the frame with or bounce off. It’s a role that required emotional and physical intensity. The calm-under-fire John tries his darndest to stay alive and return to his wife (Nicole Kidman), who’s alone on their yacht with a psychotic stranger (Billy Zane). The film is pacy as hell; there’s a real electrical charge to it.
2. Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Taika Waititi’s beloved New Zealand comedy unforgettably paired on-the-run young delinquent Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) with Neill’s cranky foster uncle Hector. Neill goes whole hog on the grumpy old man shtick – smoking, grunting and firing off fun lines like, “You ever worked on a farm before, are you just ornamental?” The stoic Hector, who always looks as though he’s had too much to drink, may not want our love, but by god, he got it.
1. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
John Carpenter’s sensationally loud and Lovecraftian horror movie features a brilliant, wall-rattling performance from Neill, who perfectly drives the human elements of this long under-appreciated film. He plays John Trent, an insurance investigator convinced that a mass hysteria event surrounding the release of a new horror novel is a PR trick. The hardened cynic who becomes a true believer is a classic trajectory, and our man runs with it to hell and back, the protagonist’s sanity erupting like a burst blood vessel. So good.
