‘Jurassic Park’ Star Sam Neill Gives Optimistic Cancer Update After Thinking He Was ‘On the Way Out’

Sam Neill says he’s cancer-free after taking part in an Australian clinical trial for his Stage 3 blood cancer.

The Jurassic Park star, 78, announced the good news in an interview with Australia’s 7News on Sunday, about three years after he shared his angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma diagnosis in his memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?.

“I’ve been living with a particular type of lymphoma for about five years and I was on chemotherapy and the pretty miserable business, but it was keeping me alive,” Neill told the outlet, revealing that while he had initially been undergoing chemotherapy to treat his cancer, the “chemo stopped working.”

“I was at a loss and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal, obviously,” he said.

It was then that the Peaky Blinders actor decided to take part in a clinical trial for CAR T-cell therapy, a personalized form of immunotherapy that genetically engineers T cells so they can do more to detect and kill cancerous cells, as per the Cleveland Clinic.

Neill told Australian Story in September 2023 that with the ongoing treatment, he had been in remission for at least a year, and now, The Twelve actor said, “I’ve just had a scan just now and there is no cancer in my body, that’s an extraordinary thing.”

With his positive prognosis, Neill said he’s thinking of returning to acting, teasing to 7News, “It’s time I did another movie.”

In Neill’s 2023 memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?, the actor revealed that he experienced swollen glands in his neck while promoting 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, which led to his diagnosis.

“Within a few days I was lying on a hospital bed having all kinds of chemicals draining into my system, killing everything aboard,” he wrote at the time. “For therapeutic reasons. To be cured of a thing I didn’t know I had just a few days ago. Yep, suddenly things are different — this is some serious s—.”

“I started to think I better write some of this down because I’m not sure how long I have to live,” he shared of the diagnosis’ impact on his decision to write a memoir. “I was running against the clock.”