Sam Neill

Nigel John Dermot Neill was born in Omagh on 14 September 1947, the son of English mother Priscilla Beatrice (née Ingham) and New Zealand father Dermot Neill. Consequently, he has three documented nationalities for New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. His great-grandfather Percival "Percy" Neill had left Belfast for Australia, joining a firm of merchants in Melbourne. Four years later, in 1863, he moved to New Zealand and settled in Dunedin. He was the son of a wine merchant who imported wine from France. At the time of Neill's birth, his father was stationed in Northern Ireland, serving as an officer with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. His father's family owned Neill and Co. (later part of the listed hospitality group Wilson Neill). In 1954, the Neill family moved to New Zealand and settled in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch. He attended Cashmere Primary School and Medbury School, a private prep school. After a year, his parents and younger sister Juliet moved south to his father's home city of Dunedin. They lived at Macandrew Bay, where the children could roam free in the holidays. He first took to calling himself "Sam" at school because there were several other students named Nigel, and because he felt the name Nigel was "a little effete for ... a New Zealand playground". From 1961, he attended the Anglican boys' boarding and day secondary school Christ's College in Christchurch. He went on to study at the University of Canterbury but was uncertain about a career, deciding not to follow his father into the army or the family firm. He considered law, but wasted one year when he failed all four law units. Neill was in several plays, such as playing Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Ngaio Marsh for the Canterbury University Drama Society. He acted in a production of Marat/Sade by Mervyn Thompson, and when another actor dropped out of a Wellington season, Neill replaced him as Jacques Roux. The play was staged at Downstage Theatre. He had "the time of [his] life" and saw that the arts and drama were "part of the fabric of the city" unlike in Christchurch or Dunedin. He transferred from Canterbury to Victoria University of Wellington to finish his Bachelor of Arts with a philosophy unit, and passed the "logic" paper with some last-minute coaching by John Clarke. Neill played Macbeth in a university production directed by Phillip Mann, then joined Downstage as a professional paid actor for $25 per week, plus food from the kitchen left over from the meal served to the audience before the show. In 2004, on the Australian talk show Enough Rope, interviewer Andrew Denton briefly touched on the topic of Neill's stuttering. He recalled how deeply it had affected him in his life and, as a result, he often found himself "hoping that people wouldn't talk to [him]" so he would not have to answer them. He also stated, "I kind of outgrew it [but] you can still detect me as a stammerer."