Actor Sam Neill, best known for his high profile social media presence (and also as one of the main interpreters of the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World film franchise) announced today that he had recently undergone stage 3 blood cancer treatment. By The GuardianNeill delivered the news via his new memoirs, Did I ever tell you thatwhich appears in its opening chapter a segment in which Neill wrote, before the treatmentThis“The thing is, I’m a crook. Maybe dying. Maybe I should speed things up. Neill has since been declared cancer free, after more than a year of treatment, despite apparently being on at least one cancer drug for the rest of his life.
In fact, Neill’s book is a direct response to his diagnosis, having started writing vignettes of his life as a way to distract himself from his treatment to angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma – the first symptoms of which began to appear during the press tour for Jurassic World: Dominion. In a recent interview, timed for the book’s release next week, Neill explained how the writing process helped him focus during some “dark times”:
I never intended to write a book. But as I continued to write, I realized that it kind of gave me a reason to live, and I would go to bed thinking, “I’ll write about it tomorrow…it’ll amuse me. And so it really saved my life, because I couldn’t have gone through that without doing anything, you know.
In addition to his Jurassic work, Neill recently appeared in 2022 Thor: Love and Thunderwhile also appearing in a TV miniseries The Twelve. Did I ever tell you that comes out next Tuesday.