Beloved actor Sam Neill, 78, has revealed he is completely cancer free.
The star has been through a gruelling four-year battle with a rare blood cancer, and he credits a cutting-edge treatment that is only available in clinical trials in Australia to the turnaround.
“I’ve had a scan just now, and there is no cancer in my body,” Neill told 7News.
“This is an extraordinary thing.”
Neill was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma — a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — in 2022.
He went public the following year, saying at the time, “I’m not afraid to die, but it would annoy me because I’d really like another decade or two, you know?
“We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses. I want to be around to see it all mature. And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big. But as for the dying? I couldn’t care less.”
He also wrote candidly about his treatment in his 2023 memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, describing a “brutal” monthly chemotherapy regime that was keeping him alive but taking an enormous toll.
However, the then chemotherapy stopped working.
“I was at a loss and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal, obviously,” he said.
Speaking with the Herald Sun at the time, the Jurassic Park actor revealed that he was working hard to remain optimistic but was unsure what the future held.
“It’s great to be alive and working in beautiful places,” he shared with the publication.
“I didn’t know, really, how long I had to live. Once it [chemotherapy] started to fail I thought, what happens now?” he also shared candidly with Australian Story at the time.
It was at that point that Neill discovered CAR T-cell therapy — a groundbreaking treatment that genetically modifies a patient’s own blood cells to recognise and attack cancer cells that were previously invisible to the immune system.
Haematologist Miles Prince said of the process, “We turbocharge those cells to then be able to recognise the cancer, which was not visible to the immune system before, and then jump on it and kill it.”
Thankfully, for The Twelve actor, it worked.
“It’s science at its best,” he said of the therapy, which remains in clinical trials in Australia and is not yet widely accessible.
The star is now fighting to make sure everyday Australians can access the life-saving treatment.
It’s hoped the therapy will be formally approved and available to patients within a couple of months.
“I’m very, very excited that this can happen,” he said.
His recovery has clearly reignited his enthusiasm for life — and for work.
“It’s time I did another movie,” he said.
