Sam Neill

Sam Neill has passed away at the age of 78. His cause of death has not been revealed but his family has announced that he did not die of cancer. The statement reads, "the loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer-free." Kind of a Pyrrhic victory if you ask me. I hope he didn't die of anything too painful or humiliating. Apparently he was a really nice guy. I remember seeing clips of him on social media on his farm.

He was a good actor, able to move smoothly between the worlds of art films and genre films. Of course, he's best known as the star of Jurassic Park, but that was just one of three of the essential genre films he made in the '90s, the other two being Event Horizon and In the Mouth of Madness, the latter being really John Carpenter's last unequivocally good movie.

Others will remember him for playing the title role in the '90s Merlin miniseries or for his character on Peaky Blinders. He was also in The Piano. I enjoyed his performance as King Charles II in Restoration, a lavish period movie that also starred Robert Downey Jr. and Meg Ryan.