Recommendations of the Editorial team
Sam Neill is cancer free – and he has a groundbreaking new therapy to thank for it.
“I’ve been living with a certain type of lymphoma for about five years and was on chemotherapy – a pretty miserable condition, but it kept me alive,” Neill said in an interview with Australia’s 7News. “Then the chemo stopped working. I was at a loss and it looked like I was going astray – which obviously wasn’t ideal.”
The actor’s only remaining option was CAR T-cell therapy, which genetically alters patients’ blood cells and is in clinical trials to treat myeloma, another blood cancer. “I’ve just had a scan and there’s no cancer in my body – that’s an extraordinary thing,” said Neill. “I’m very, very excited that something like this is possible.” The Jurassic Park star added: “It’s about time I did another movie.”
Use for all patients
Neill is currently working with the Snowdome Foundation to lobby state and federal governments to fund life-saving treatment for all blood cancer patients in Australia. “This is science at its best,” he said.
In 2023, the actor made it public that he had been diagnosed with stage 3 blood cancer. “I’m not afraid of death,” he told the Guardian, “but it would annoy me. Because I would really like to have another decade or two, you know? We’ve built all these beautiful terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be there when it all matures. And I have my little grandchildren. I want to see them grow up.” He said: “But as for the dying itself? I don’t really care about that.”
