Random Roles: Sam Neill

The actor: Sam Neill, who got his start as a jack-of-all-trades with the New Zealand National Film Unit, but after appearing in such films as Sleeping Dogs and My Brilliant Career, soon found his services in greater demand. Slowly but surely, Neill pulled increasingly higher-profile gigs, the culmination of which occurred in 1993, when he starred as Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Still rarely at a loss for work, Neill can currently be found in the ensemble of Fox’s Alcatraz, which airs Mondays at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Alcatraz (2012-present)—“Emerson Hauser”

Sam Neill: It was just one of those things: I finished a job—I can’t remember what—and was passing through town, my agent said, “They’d like to see you at Bad Robot,” and the next day I was onboard.

The A.V. Club: How new was Alcatraz to you? Did you have any familiarity with the prison and its history?

SN: I’d been out there once. It was many, many years ago, but, you know, the strange, haunted sense that it has remained with me to this day. That was something like 20 years ago, though. When you do something like that, you don’t imagine that it’s going to become part of your life in the future. Certainly not a place like that!

AVC: When you got the part, did you go out on your own to do any further research, or did you just kind of decide to go with whatever reality the producers built for the show?

SN: Well, we are, of course, dealing in fiction. And a fairly heightened form of fiction, in my view. [Laughs.] We’re in the J.J. Abrams version of Alcatraz, which verges on becoming a graphic novel, but I’ve always thought that this particular show… Of course, it has that sort of sci-fi splash and fantasy elements about it, but the bedrock in which it’s grounded is that strange island in the middle of the harbor. We have a good book about Alcatraz that floats around here—you know, one of those big coffee-table books that’s filled with black-and-white photos and gritty stories about what happened there—but apart from that, I’d have to say that we’re making it up. [Laughs.]

AVC: What’s your take on Hauser?

SN: I think of Hauser as a sort of dark avenging angel. But a damaged one, at best.

AVC: Regarding Stan Winston’s creations, Laura Dern referred to her leading man—referring in this case to the T. Rex—as “very temperamental,” saying that he broke down often.

SN: [Laughs.] But what a wonderful thing he was, that T. Rex. I think it was a lesson that’s been forgotten a little bit, in that I don’t entirely think that computer-generated films, as interesting as those have been, are quite the same as those with three-dimensional actors and three-dimensional devices in them, if you like. But if you combine them, the actual things help to make the computer-generated things seem more actual. And that’s something I think is sometimes forgotten.

AVC: How was it to return to the role of Alan Grant for the third film?

SN: I really enjoyed coming back for a second time, actually, because I’d kind of worked out how to play the character, and in the, uh, seven years of downtime [Laughs.] I had a bit of a think about how I should’ve played the character, and I came back and did it better, I thought.

AVC: Would you be willing to come back if there’s ever a Jurassic Park IV?

SN: Look, I’d never say never to anything like that, of course, but every year you hear another rumor. I’d be very surprised if they ever actually make another one.

AVC: Just to get formal clarification on an unsubstantiated Wikipedia claim, is it true that you were offered the part of Elrond in The Lord Of The Rings but had to decline because of your commitments to Jurassic Park III?

SN: No, but I was offered a part in Lord Of The Rings, but it wasn’t Elrond. That, of course, was my friend Hugo Weaving, for whom I am often confused. Neither of us understands why, but probably twice a week I’ll be walking down the street and someone will say, “Loved you in The Matrix!” [Laughs.] And I always smile graciously and say, “Thank you very much!”

The Dish (2001)—“Cliff Buxton”
Dean Spanley (2008)—“Dean Spanley”

SN: Oh, I’m glad you’ve seen The Dish! Good ol’ Patrick [Warburton]…

AVC: It’s a small film, but it seems like almost everyone who’s seen it remembers it fondly. It came up repeatedly when word got out that we were going to be speaking with you.

SN: Oh, really? Oh, that’s good to know. [Laughs.] Yeah, it’s a sweet, small film with sort of an unobvious humor running through it. I’m quite fond of that film.

AVC: And how was good ol’ Patrick to work with?

SN: Oh, he was hell. [Laughs.] No, no, he’s a lovely man, Patrick. You know, another film that has comic elements like that, another one that I’m quite fond of but which far fewer people have seen, is one called Dean Spanley, which was made about three years ago. It’s with Peter O’Toole, Jeremy Northam, and Bryan Brown, and it just disappeared into some Miramax dungeon or something and has never emerged, apart from in the UK and my part of the world [Australia and New Zealand].

AVC: What was the premise of the film?

SN: Well, it comes from a very unlikely novel by a man called Lord Dunsany, and the Peter O’Toole character is slightly based on Dunsany himself. If I tell you the premise, you will think it’s not particularly something that is credible, but it’s a film that really flies. I play an Edwardian vicar who has a proclivity toward a particular wine called Imperial Tuckay, from Hungary, and when he has quite a few glasses under his belt, he has flashbacks which are—unbeknownst to him—to his previous incarnation as a dog. But the film is about grief and reconciliation and lots of other things, including the marvelous word of wine, which I have a vested interest in, I think you’d have to say. [Laughs.]

Possession (1981)—“Mark”

SN: Oh, my God. You’re really finding the obscure ones now. [Laughs.] Yeah, that was probably the most crazed thing I’ve ever done. It’s by a fabulously crazed Polish director called Andrzej Żuławski, with Isabelle Adjani playing my wife, who was pretty out there at the time as well. [Laughs.] We were shooting in Cold War Berlin, and… It’s sort of a monster movie, but it’s more about the terrible destruction of a marriage than anything, and if you have the courage to sit through the whole thing, it has its rewards.

The Simpsons (1994)—“Malloy”

SN: Ah, yes! Well, it’s always flattering to be asked to be on The Simpsons, so I was very pleased to do that. Interestingly, I asked them, “What is the character like?” And they said, “Well, he’s a sort of James Mason villain, if you like.” Which is curious, because James was, in fact, a mentor of mine and a friend of mine.

AVC: Could you then picture him in the part when you read it?

SN: Oh, yes. And I think he would’ve been better at it than me. But, then, he was better than me at most things.

Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983)—“Sidney Reilly”

AVC: That was your first full-time series gig, correct?

SN: Yes, it was, and it was a cracker of a job, actually. It was about seven months or something like that, all filmed around Elstree [Studios, in Hertfordshire, England], and every episode we’d get four or five really good British actors who’d come in. It was a great little learning curve for me, that job. And it still has its admirers. I still get fan mail for that thing, you know?

AVC: Is it true that Reilly was directly responsible for you getting the chance to audition to play James Bond?

SN: I don’t know why I was asked to audition, but I was, and I did, against my better judgment. My agent, who has now left this mortal coil, so I suppose I can say what I like… [Laughs.] But she was deluded about certain things, and one of her delusions was that Bond would’ve been good for me, and vice versa, so I went very reluctantly out to test for that. And to my great relief, I didn’t get the part, and I haven’t looked back. [Laughs.] You know, all those guys have been much better than I would’ve been. And Timothy Dalton got the part that time, on that occasion, and he was very good.

Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000)—“Thomas Jefferson”

SN: Oh, hardly anyone remembers that, do they? [Laughs.] I mean, it’s hardly ever been mentioned again. I’m not entirely sure if I ever even saw it. Of course, it was based on the occasionally contentious theory, whether you accept it or not, that Sally Hemings was Jefferson’s mistress and, indeed, bore him several children. Unfortunately, we will never really know the truth of that. What we do know, supposedly, is that Sally Hemings’ descendants have Jefferson DNA in them, but, you know, she might’ve possibly been with his brother. There are different theories, and I’m not enough of a historian to give you a definitive answer on that. [Laughs.] But it was interesting. And then we were shooting in Richmond, Virginia, which was very nice, and we had a really lovely designer who sort of recreated Monticello. So, yeah, I enjoyed it.

A Cry In The Dark (1988)—“Michael Chamberlain”

AVC: For the record, this was already in the mix to be asked about even before the recent developments.