Sam Neill shares he wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for advancements in medicine

New Zealand actor Sam Neill has admitted he wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the advancements in medicine to treat cancer.

The Jurassic Park actor was diagnosed with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma - a form of blood cancer - in 2022, and underwent chemotherapy treatment after his cancer diagnosis, but it stopped working after three months and he switched his treatment to a rare anti-cancer drug which led him into remission.

He says it’s thanks to the “strides” that have been made in science over the past two decades that people like himself have better survival rates.

Speaking on Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time podcast, he said: “I’m in remission and as you see, I’m hard at work and enjoying life immensely.

“I’m very grateful for not just the wonderful care I’ve had from doctors and nurses and so on, but also the strides that have been made in treating these things in the last few years.”

He added: “If this had happened to me 20 years ago, I wouldn’t be around to talk to you.

“I go in [for treatment] once a month now. But it used to be three times a month and it’s down to once a month now.”

The 77-year-old star says there are good days and bad days in between treatment.

He said: “You have sort three or four horrible days afterwards, and then all is well and you cheer up and I go to the gym and all that.”

Despite the advances in medicine, Neill previously admitted he’s aware the drug won’t continue working indefinitely.

He told Australian Story: “I’m prepared for that.”

“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.”

He first revealed news of his cancer battle in his book Did I Ever Tell You This which he started work on following his diagnosis.

He told Sky News : “The cancer thing came out as a corollary to the release of the book, which is a memoir that I wrote when I was under chemo. I’m doing absolutely fine now. What was slightly annoying was that the story was sort of ‘cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer’, and really the other half of the story is ‘remission, remission and remission - and I’m absolutely fine.”

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.