EW pays tribute to the late, great actor by ranking his 10 best performances in film and television.

Sam Neill’s 10 best roles, ranked

EW pays tribute to the late, great actor by ranking his 10 best performances in film and television.

July 13, 2026 2:55 p.m. ET

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Sam Neill in ‘Peaky Blinders,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ and ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’. Credit:

Netflix; Universal Pictures; Madman Films

Sam Neill, the great New Zealand actor best known for his iconic role in *Jurassic Park*, has died at the age of 78. News of Neill’s passing was shared by his family, who added that the actor had remained cancer-free since making that announcement in April.

Among the most beloved actors in Hollywood, Neill’s career spanned more than 50 years and extended far beyond his performance as paleontologist Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s *Jurassic Park*. Neill made his screen debut in the 1975 thriller *Landfall*, two years before his breakthrough performance in the landmark New Zealand film *Sleeping Dogs*. Over the decades, he reliably landed memorable roles on screens both big and small and developed a reputation among his peers as a kind, thoughtful actor with a great sense of humor.

Neill is being mourned by his former costars, many of whom became longtime friends, including Toni Collette, who remembered the actor as a “big-hearted king,” and Laura Dern, who told **, “He showed me the depths of loyalty, protectiveness and love, always with the driest of wit.” The actor is also mourned by fans spanning multiple generations thanks to his enduring screen presence.

Below, we’re ranking Neill’s 10 best film and television performances, from his unforgettable turns in blockbusters and cult classics to his compelling work on beloved TV series.

Peaky Blinders (2013-2014)

Sam Neill and Cillian Murphy in ‘Peaky Blinders’.

Neill stars in the first two seasons of *Peaky Blinders* as Major Chester Campbell, who’s been tasked by Winston Churchill with cleaning up Birmingham — putting him in direct opposition to Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby. Campbell may be on the side of the law, but he’s no heroic foil: he’s just as ruthless and conniving as Tommy, whose constant outmaneuvering drives Campbell to the brink.

*Peaky Blinders* gives Neill a chance to do one of the things he does best — lose his mind — as a despicable character that everyone loves to hate. You can tell that Neill is having a blast playing such a rotten, pitiable man, and he brings a lot of depth to a role that might otherwise be one-dimensional.

Sleeping Dogs (1977)

Sam Neill in ‘Sleeping Dogs’.

Neill gave his breakthrough performance in *Sleeping Dogs*, Roger Donaldson’s 1977 political thriller. It was the first 35mm feature film produced entirely in New Zealand. The film stars Neill as Smith, a man who moves to a remote island with his dog after the collapse of his marriage (would you believe his wife was having an affair?). Smith soon finds himself reluctantly pulled into a civil war between guerrilla activists and an increasingly authoritarian New Zealand government.

*Sleeping Dogs* serves as a prototype for one half of Neill’s career. It casts him as a cuckolded husband who gets drawn into a much bigger drama than he bargained for, allowing Neill to explore the inner emotional turmoil of an ostensibly quiet, grounded character.

Daybreakers (2009)

Sam Neill in ‘Daybreakers’.

Ben Rothstein/Lionsgate

*Daybreakers* would be nothing more than a solid dystopian sci-fi flick if not for its stacked cast. Set in a world where a plague has turned most of humanity into vampires, Ethan Hawke stars as a hematologist researching a substitute for their dwindling blood supply. Willem Dafoe costars as a former vampire nicknamed Elvis who leads a resistance against the greedy, capitalist vampire upper class — a good indication of the film’s campy tone.

Neill has the best role in the film — or perhaps he just gives the most satisfying performance — as Charles Bromley, the villainous owner of the corporation that controls most of the world’s blood supply. It’s so clear in every scene that Neill is relishing his role as a ruthless vampire, a wonderful metaphor for corporate greed. And he looks *really good* with vampire teeth.

The Piano (1993)

Sam Neill in ‘The Piano’.

Miramax/Courtesy Everett

Released the same year as *Jurassic Park*, Jane Campion’s *The Piano* couldn’t be more different from Spielberg’s blockbuster. Holly Hunter stars in the period drama as Ada, a mute woman who travels to rural New Zealand with her daughter (a young Anna Paquin), where she is to marry a brusque settler named Alisdair, played by Neill. The film largely belongs to Hunter, Paquin, and Harvey Keitel, whose character, George, begins a relationship with Ada right under Alisdair’s nose.

But Neill brings an expected complexity to his performance as Alisdair in a film that dissects and prods at his fragile masculinity (not for nothing, Neill has proven on more than one occasion that he’s quite good at playing the cuckold). It’s an interesting counterpart to *Jurassic Park*, as Neill acknowledged when he spoke with EW in 1993. “It’s a good double act to have,” he said, “this commercial success and this critical success.”

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Merlin (1998)

Sam Neill in ‘Merlin’.

Hallmark Entertainment/Courtesy Everett

Not to be confused with the BBC series, *Merlin* was a two-part television miniseries that premiered on NBC before making its way to home video, where it was discovered and embraced by an entire generation of fantasy nerds. Neill played the legendary wizard, reflecting on his life and his place in the Arthurian legend alongside an all-star ensemble that includes Miranda Richardson, Helena Bonham Carter, Martin Short, Rutger Hauer, James Earl Jones, and Isabella Rossellini, the latter of whom plays Merlin’s love interest, Nimue.

As with many of his best roles, Neill is the backbone of *Merlin*, grounding its high fantasy with a nuanced performance that traces the wizard from his ambitious youth to his hard-earned wisdom. The performance also earned Neill an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

Julian Dennison and Sam Neill in ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’.

Julian Dennison was the breakout star of *Hunt for the Wilderpeople*, but Neill delivers a knockout supporting turn that gives the film a ton of heart. Taika Waititi’s adventurous comedy centers on Ricky Baker (Dennison), a foster kid adopted by his aunt Bella (Rima Te Wiata), with whom he eventually bonds, and uncle Hector (Neill), a cranky old hunter. When Bella unexpectedly dies, Ricky fakes his own death and runs off into the woods, forcing Hector to track him down.

With his bushy beard and a grumpy demeanor that belies a tender-hearted soul, Neill was destined to play a role like Hector. Waititi’s sharp, funny script pairs Neill with Dennison’s foul-mouthed teen to create a hilarious-yet-heartfelt odd couple.

Event Horizon (1997)

Sam Neill in ‘Event Horizon’.

Paramount Pictures

*Event Horizon* makes for an excellent double feature with *In the Mouth of Madness*, a pair of riveting genre films elevated even further by Neill’s progressively disturbed performances. Before he churned out a bunch of *Resident Evil* movies, Paul W.S. Anderson directed this sci-fi thriller about the crew of a rescue ship dispatched to investigate a distress signal from the eponymous vessel, which mysteriously reappears after a seven-year disappearance.

Neill plays Dr. William Weir, the designer of the Event Horizon and the creator of its experimental gravity drive, allowing him to indulge in one of sci-fi’s most delightful tropes: explaining the nature of spacetime with a pencil and a folded sheet of paper. That’s about as pleasant as things ever get for Weir, whose sanity steadily unravels over the course of the film, culminating in one of its most potent scares.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Sam Neill in ‘Jurassic Park’.

Universal Pictures

No tribute to Neill would be complete without discussing his iconic role in one of the greatest films ever made. *Jurassic Park* stars Neill as Alan Grant, a renowned paleontologist who reluctantly agrees to visit the eponymous theme park created by wealthy industrialist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Alongside Laura Dern as paleobotanist Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldblum as mathematician Ian Malcolm, Neill completed the holy trinity of protagonists in Steven Spielberg’s enduring blockbuster dinosaur adventure.

Though *Jurassic Park* features his most memorable and widely recognized role, Neill told EW in 2001 that he wasn’t entirely pleased with it. “I was never completely happy with how Grant turned out in the first one,” Neill said, while promoting his return for *Jurassic Park III*. “So getting it right this time was part of the motivation in doing it. I thought he’d be a little more gnarly than in the previous film. The model in the back of my head was Lee Marvin in [1967’s] *Point Blank*, a guy who’d been through the mill before.”

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Sam Neill in ‘In the Mouth of Madness’.

New Line/Courtesy Everett

One of the best horror films of the ’90s, John Carpenter’s *In the Mouth of Madness* is an unsettling supernatural thriller that nods to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Following the disappearance of renowned horror author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), insurance investigator John Trent (Neill) is hired by Cane’s publisher to look into the whereabouts of the author, whose forthcoming novel — the titular *In the Mouth of Madness* — is highly anticipated.

Neill’s performance beautifully tracks the arc of the film, as Trent’s vague sense of dread gives way to mounting paranoia and eventually madness, exacerbated by his growing inability to discern reality from fiction.

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Possession (1981)

Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill in ‘Possession’.

Courtesy Everett

It’s impossible to talk about Neill’s career without praising his performance in *Possession*. Andrzej Żuławski’s surreal psychological thriller centers on Anna (Isabelle Adjani) and Mark (Neill), a couple whose marriage begins violently unraveling when Anna admits to an affair and asks for a divorce. The once-obscure horror film has found a much wider audience in recent years thanks to streaming. While Adjani tends to receive most of the attention for her impassioned performance, Neill’s portrayal of an embittered, frustrated (and frequently cuckolded) husband keeps *Possession* grounded, providing a compelling foil to Adjani beneath a subtle undercurrent of something sinister.

Reflecting on the difficulties he had working with Żuławski, Neill wrote in his memoir: “I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact.”

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