Aimee Walker
Film icon Sam Neill has shared a devastating update about his cancer treatment.
Neill, 76, is a New Zealand actor who is best known for his role as Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise.
He is regarded as one of the most versatile actors of his generation, having leading roles in both blockbusters and dramas.
Earlier this year, Neill devastatingly announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer – angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma.
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According to Cancer Research UK, angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma is a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
Symptoms include a number of swollen lymph nodes, a high temperature, itching and weight loss.
Treatment usually involves a combination of chemotherapy drugs.
In an interview with Australian Story, Neill explained that as chemotherapy failed to work on him his doctors switched him to an anti-cancer drug – amazingly leading him to be put in remission for 12 months.
However, the actor requires infusions every two weeks for an indefinite period of time and he’s now shared that eventually, the drug will stop working – which he says he is ‘prepared for’.
Neill explained: “I’m not in any way frightened of dying. That doesn’t worry me. It’s never worried me from the beginning, but I would be annoyed.
“I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do. Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.”
The Hunt for the Wilderpeople star also shared photos from his time undergoing chemotherapy – in which he looks unrecognisable without his salt and pepper beard.
“There were times in the last year where I had to look at myself in the mirror and I wasn’t a pretty sight,” he said on the programme.
“I was stripped of any kind of dignity.”
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Neill discovered that he had cancer during his first trip back to New Zealand following lockdowns in 2022.
The actor’s son, Tim, told Australian Story that his father had barely been home an hour when he was delivered the heartbreaking news by a doctor over the phone.
“When he hung the phone up and we sat down, and we had a little bit of a cry together. It was supposed to be a happy day. He didn’t get to stay,” Tim recalled.
Weighing in, Neill continued: “I was in really a fight for my life. And everything was a new world and a rather alarming world.”
He went on to say that he had around three to four months of ‘brutal’ and ‘conventional chemotherapies’.
Neill first revealed his cancer diagnosis while promoting his memoir ‘Did I Ever Tell You This?’, in which he wrote that he is ‘possibly dying’, as per MailOnline.
He went on to say in an interview with The Guardian: “The thing is, I’m crook. I may have to speed this up. I found myself with nothing to do.
“And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘What am I going to do?'”
Neill also told the BBC that he began the memoir as a distraction and to ‘give me a reason to get through the day’.
Despite his health problems, the Blackbird star says that retirement isn’t an option and that he still enjoys working in front of the camera.
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