Sam Neill, who is currently battling stage three blood cancer, broke down in tears during a heartbreaking interview when asked a simple question about his parents.
The 76-year-old New Zealand actor broke down on the debut episode of the ABC series The Assembly When asked what was the “best lesson” he learned from his parents.
Struck by the “interesting” question posed by one of the autistic trainee interviewers, he fought back tears as he recalled his mother Priscilla.
“Wow, that’s a really interesting question. I think they were… (chokes up) I don’t know why that question touched me so much, but it did,” the Jurassic Park star said.
‘My parents were from a generation that went through a lot. They went through the (Great) Depression. My mother lost her father in World War I.
“She grew up without her father. They went through a lot, but they were very stoic people.”
Sam went on to describe a tough year he had in college, when he did nothing because he was too busy acting in plays and “trying to find a girlfriend.”
He said he became “very anxious” when final exams approached and realized he hadn’t studied at all, forcing him to confide in his mother about what to do.
Sam Neill, 76 (pictured), who is currently battling stage three blood cancer, cried during a heartbreaking interview when asked a simple question about his parents.
“I said, ‘Oh, I think I’m having a nervous breakdown and I have exams in a couple of weeks and I don’t know how I’m going to do,'” she explained.
“She just looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to pull yourself together, aren’t you?'”
“I think the best lesson I learned from her is that sometimes you have to pull yourself together. It’s a tough lesson, but a good one.”
Sam was born in Northern Ireland, the son of Priscilla Beatrice (née Ingham) and Dermot Neill, while his father, an army officer, was stationed in the country.
In the same episode of The Assembly, a series in which a group of autistic journalists train under the tutelage of Leigh Sales, Sam revealed his “brutal” chemotherapy treatment after being diagnosed with stage three blood cancer.
“I’m in another one now, so at least I don’t look like someone’s bald thumb,” he joked.
“That’s how I looked for quite a while. It was embarrassing, I lost my beard and everything, and with that I lost my dignity.”
The New Zealand actor broke down in the first episode of ABC series The Assembly when asked what the “best lesson” he’d learned from his parents was. Pictured are Sam’s father Dermot (left) and mother Priscilla (right).
Sam revealed last year that he discovered he had cancer in 2022 during his first trip back to New Zealand after lockdowns made returning home to see his family virtually impossible for two years.
His son Tim told Australian Story his father had been back in New Zealand for just an hour when a doctor called him with the terrible news he had cancer.
“When he got off the phone, we sat down and cried a little bit together. It was supposed to be a happy day. He couldn’t stay,” Tim said.
Sam added: “I was really in a fight for my life. And it was all a new world and a pretty scary world.
“I had three or four months of reasonably conventional chemotherapy, which was brutal.”
Tim went to visit his father while he was undergoing chemotherapy and was horrified when he saw how weak he was.
“I think the best lesson I learned from her is that sometimes you have to pull yourself together. It’s a tough lesson, but a good one,” he said.
‘I was in shock, I broke down and I could barely hold him. I was skin and bones. And then he started scolding me for being upset and said I was stressing him out, but I said, ‘What are you talking about, Dad?’
Just when they thought Sam’s health might be improving, he received even worse news: the cancer had returned and this time it was more serious.
Eventually, Sam was prescribed an experimental cancer drug, which thankfully started to work.
He has been in remission for almost two years, but admitted he is “prepared” for the fact that he will eventually stop working.
“I know I have it, but I’m not really interested in it. It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get involved in it,” he said of the disease.
Sam now receives infusions every two weeks and will do so for the rest of his life or until the medication stops working.
The sessions are exhausting, “very grim and depressing,” he said.
Sam revealed last year that he discovered he had cancer in 2022 during his first trip back to New Zealand after lockdowns made returning home to see his family virtually impossible for two years. He is pictured with his son Tim