Sam Neill says he's cancer-free

The 78-year-old actor tells 7 News in Australia that he had been undergoing “the miserable business” of chemotherapy for years. “Then the chemo stopped working,” he continued. “I was at a loss, and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal, obviously.” But Neill’s doctors found the “third-line option” he described in 2023: CAR T-cell therapy, which genetically modifies the blood, so the immune system can find the previously invisible tumor and kill it. “I’ve just had a scan just now and there is no cancer in my body, that’s an extraordinary thing.” 

The treatment isn’t readily available to Australians, something Neill hopes to change by petitioning federal and state governments with the Snowdome Foundation. But with a new lease on life thanks to “science at its very best,” Neill has another thing he’d like to get moving on: “It’s time I did another movie.”