“The loss was sudden and unexpected,” Neill’s family said in a statement Monday.
Neill’s career climbed an upward trajectory from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. His portrayal of real-life spy Sidney Reilly in the 1983 TV miniseries “Reilly, Ace of Spades” was met with acclaim and largely marked his breakthrough on the international stage.
He played a Soviet submarine officer in the 1990 film “The Hunt for Red October” and the husband of Holly Hunter’s Ada in the Oscar-winning historical romance “The Piano” in 1993. Other notable roles include a haunted astrophysicist in the 1997 sci-fi horror film “Event Horizon” and a middle-aged Merlin, the wizard from the tales of King Arthur, in the 1998 NBC miniseries of the same name.
The latter role earned him one of two Emmy nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.
In the 2010s, Neill maintained his presence in TV and film with roles in the British crime drama series “Peaky Blinders” and New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi’s 2016 comedy adventure “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” Neill had more than 150 screen credits.
In 1991, Neill was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to acting. In 2007 he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, the New Zealand royal honors system, and in 2022 he accepted a knighthood.
Following his reprisal of the role of Dr. Alan Grant in the 2022 film “Jurassic World: Dominion,” Neill revealed he had been diagnosed with a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He described his cancer battle in his 2023 memoir, “Did I Ever Tell You This?”
In an interview with The Guardian in 2023, Neill said he would like to live “another decade or two” but that he was “not afraid to die.”
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” he said of his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends. Just pleased to be alive.”
