Sam Neill is a horror icon. But as he’s facing his mortality in real life, he says he is “not remotely afraid.”
In an emotional episode of Australian Story on Monday night, the Jurassic Park star updated fans on his battle with cancer. Sam first revealed publicly back in March that he was diagnosed early last year with non-Hodgkin blood cancer, angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. The cancer of the blood is in stage 3 now — and unfortunately it proved resistant to early efforts to fight it off.
The beloved New Zealand actor revealed in the special his doctors had tried hitting the cancer hard with chemotherapy. But after just three months they realized the chemo had stopped working. Devastating. And the photos he and his son shared from that time are… really crushing.
Thankfully they found a treatment that’s working for now — a rare, experimental new drug. He’s been in remission for around a year now, receiving infusions of the drug every two weeks. He looks fantastic — far better than in the days following the chemo, which Sam says were “very grim and depressing.” But sadly it isn’t all good news. His doctors told Sam it’s only temporary — even this drug will stop working soon enough.
Video: Shannen Doherty Gives Emotional Cancer Update — And Gets Standing Ovation!
Neill made audiences scream for decades in movies like Possession, In The Mouth of Madness, and Event Horizon. But this illness, this is truly terrifying. However, he’s ready. He told them when the drug stops working, he’ll be ready:
“I’m prepared for that.”
Having had time to brace himself after his shocking diagnosis — and the prognosis about the chemo — the 76-year-old says he’s decided to not waste any of the time he has left worrying about it:
“I know I’ve got it, but I’m not really interested in it. It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get into it.”
Hilariously, he says he’s more upset about the “annoying” idea of being so sick he’d have to retire! THAT, he says, “fills me with horror.”
LOLz! Well, hopefully that won’t happen too soon. And who knows, maybe he’ll have time to do one more scary movie…
You can watch the entire poignant episode of Australian Story from ABC News (below)! Just make sure to get have some tissues at the ready.
[Image via Australian Story/YouTube.]
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