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Hero image for ScreenTalk Legends - Sam Neill

ScreenTalk Legends - Sam Neill

Interview – 2024

Sam Neill reckons that "the only thing I can halfway do that's decent is acting". Over a multidecade career, the self-deprecating actor, winemaker and director (Cinema of Unease) has played cops, criminals, the anti-Christ, a man on the run, and a priest who thinks he was once a dog — plus at least 100 other screen roles.

In this extended ScreenTalk Legends interview, the star of The Piano, Death in Brunswick and Hunt for the Wilderpeople talks about:

  • Discovering his crippling stammer disappeared when he got onstage (1 minute in)

  • How playing a priest in Ashes (1975) fooled friends into thinking he'd found God (2 minutes)

  • The terror of starring in his first feature Sleeping Dogs (1977) — and how making documentaries fed into his acting (4 minutes)

  • Imposter syndrome (7 minutes), advice for young actors (8 minutes) and leaving New Zealand (11 minutes)

  • Feeling far more encouraged when he was working in Australia than in New Zealand (13 minutes)

  • Dragging Holly Hunter outside with an axe, while filming The Piano (14 minutes)

  • How he has changed as a performer (18 minutes)
  • Turning down 2008 movie Dean Spanley more than once — and how fellow cast member Peter O'Toole taught him to "never waste a word" (23 minutes) 
  • How directing Australian TV movie The Brush Off was one of the greatest yet most exhausting experiences of his life (25 minutes)
  • The New Zealand project he's most proud of — and his special theory of Kiwi films being either the West Coast or East Coast variety (28 minutes)
Interview - Rosie Howells. Director/Camera - Matt Henley/Rocket Rentals. Sound Recordist -Ian Masterton. Editor - Erin Murphy. Producer - Fran Carney. Exec Producer - Kathryn Quirk.
It was the scariest thing that I've ever done in my life, and I was an untrained actor. There was no drama school in New Zealand in those days. And it's one thing being in a film, but playing the lead in a film — I was hyperventilating to be honest.
– Sam Neill on starring in breakthrough movie Sleeping Dogs (1977), early in this interview