Sam Neill: Sam I Am

Having been an actor for over 20 years, Neill has never catapulted himself into major stardom--unlike, say, Mel Gibson, who came into the business at roughly the same time, and with whom he has contended, at times, for roles. "Do you ever look at where a Mel Gibson or a Harrison Ford is in his career and utter a 'Damn?'" I ask.

"I'm not envious of anybody," Neill asserts. "I think it's marvelous and amazing that Mel has transformed himself into not simply a movie star, but a major player. You're right that we started off at the same time, and who would have guessed that goofy old Mel would have the chutzpah to put together Braveheart, act in it and direct it? I find it absolutely staggering and I take my hat off to him."

"Why don't I hear any 'but' in what you're saying?" I ask. He laughs. "Maybe because the whole idea of 'career' is just anathema to me. If I were working my way up from vice president to CEO, then that'd be a career. But one of the real pleasures about being an actor is that you're not on a career path. You're so free of all that. One wants to be a successful actor, of course. But to want to be a movie star is making a pact with the--well, making a pact with something with which one should not make a pact. You've seen this stuff up close, so you know. It's not a great thing to be famous. In fact, I can't actually think of any particularly good things that go with fame."

Neill breaks off for a moment, then continues, "I also want to say about actors that, with all the attention paid to fame, they are also in general, trivialized. There are these perceptions that actors are unable to form stable relationships, that they subscribe to fashionable causes they haven't really thought about properly, that they're somehow unable to show their true feelings, if they have any at all. Generally speaking, I have found these views to be completely wrong. I find actors to be just the most stimulating company and I love being around them. You have to be bright, for a start, to be any good. And if they subscribe to a cause, they have given it a good deal of thought."

Oh, I get it. Big stardom? Not a good thing. Actors? Solid, thoughtful citizens. We'd better let that last point go or we'll be sparring here forever. But what he's been saying makes me wonder whether he deliberately didn't get himself cast as an Indiana Jones or in a James Bond role he's rumored to have been considered for. And while we're thinking about what he deliberately didn't do, is there truth to the rumor that he flipped off playing Meryl Streep's husband in The River Wild, not to mention the stylish villains Alan Rickman ended up doing in Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? "I never say what I turned down," Neill responds. "And I don't give a rat's ass when I know that another actor has turned down something that I accept. If they don't want to do the work, I'll be happy to. I will tell you that I was under pressure from my agent to go for Bond, though, and I subsequently left that agent. It's perfectly fine for Pierce [Brosnan], who is a terrific Bond, but I just don't think I'd be very good for Bond and I don't think Bond would be very good for me. I'm a useful actor, you see. I don't come to the audience with any particular baggage. When I turn up on the screen, you don't necessarily know whether I'm going to solve everything as the good guy or whether I will turn out to be something else entirely."

Attaining Mel- or Harrison-level stardom, though, surely would afford the pick of better roles. When I ask, "Isn't there any Mel Gibson role you might have wanted to play?" Neill responds without the slightest hesitation: "I would have done The Year of Living Dangerously in a minute. Guy Hamilton is the one film character I can very much relate to. There's a rare gallantry in him, and I understood his background as well. I also share an intoxication with the East that pervades that movie. I never remember film character names, so the very fact that I've never forgotten Guy Hamilton says a great deal."

And speaking of that superbly evocative and resonant Peter Weir-directed movie, why have Neill and Weir, a seemingly predestined duo, never joined forces? "Why indeed?" Neill responds. "Peter is very elusive, isn't he? I should nail him to the floor until we do work together. But I'd also love to do something with the Wachowski brothers. What a crackerjack film Bound is. And also with David Lynch, who I think is awfully good, as are the Hughes brothers. I really should let these people know how wonderful I think they are. I'm writing a letter now to k. d. lang because I think her new album is absolutely immaculate, so it's not that I don't write fan letters."

Though Neill is, I suspect, a terrific letter writer, he is, by his own account, hopeless in encounters with other artists he truly admires. "I do things like this all the time," he says, shaking his head, over the occasion on which he met Mick Jagger. "I am deeply into pop culture, especially pop music. I think Dion's "The Wanderer,' for me the great '60s rock and roll song, will probably endure much longer than most of the stuff we actors do. Pop music is like the sense of smell--the most potent trigger for memories. Anyway, I was at one of these Oscar parties and I was so excited to meet Mick Jagger, I blurted out, 'Mick, I've always wanted to meet you. I saw you at such-and-so in 1964 ...,' and immediately his expression completely changed and he snapped, 'Great,' or something like that. I went and buried my head in my hands. How could I be so inane?"

"Speaking of inane," I say, "did you feel silly at any point when you were making Jurassic Park?"

"It's the big effects that are of interest," says Neill, "so making it was sometimes funny. For one scene particularly, there was a guy running around holding up a big plywood T-rex head on a stick like someone carrying a placard at a political demonstration, and meanwhile, there was Spielberg behind the camera yelling, 'Arggghhh, arggghhh,' through a bullhorn, which he absolutely loved doing. I don't think you can see us heaving with laughter."

Turning to the subject of another of Neill's recent hits, I say, "When I saw The Piano, the only thing I wanted to know was how Jane Campion could possibly have been so perverse as to not have you and Harvey Keitel swap roles." "I don't immediately associate myself with a finger chopper either," Neill responds. "I read The Piano thinking I would be offered the role [Harvey] wound up playing, actually. But I think one of the interesting things about The Piano is the curiosity of its casting."

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