Sam Neill's 'cheering-up' business

Updated

Actor, winemaker, "duck dad" and occasional ukulele player, this is how Sam Neill is keeping spirits high in times of COVID-19 isolation.

The small vintage car makes its way between the rock escarpments that rear up on either side. Along the wide, deceptively still Clutha River, over the bridge into the town of Clyde with its historic stone buildings.

The great snow-capped Southern Alps of New Zealand's South Island rise up around the town.

Sam Neill parks his 1960 Austin A40 outside his favourite cafe. Greeting other locals, he settles in with his coffee and newspaper.

Here in the wine country of Central Otago he is just another farmer, another winemaker worried about early frosts, part of the landscape and of an agricultural community.

"I feel like I am part of the soil," he admits. "I love the whole process and the changing of the seasons."

His other life, in a parallel universe, is barely noticed here.

In that life there are red carpets, cameras, fame, all the things that come with being a movie star.

His son Tim Neill-Harrow, then 10, recalls the London premiere of the film Jurassic Park in 1993. At that time Jurassic Park was the most successful film of all time, had already earned $US200 million and his dad was one of the stars. "Pulling up in the limo with Stephen Spielberg and getting out and the press and crowds, it was mental," Tim tells Australian Story.

"And then Princess Diana arrived and she was absolutely lovely."

Right now, Neill should be in London filming Jurassic World: Dominion — a return to the dinosaurs after an absence of 27 years; instead he's "stuck at home like everybody else". He's passing the COVID-19 isolation days at his Sydney home by entertaining his 391,000 Twitter followers with his whimsical posts.

He plays Radiohead and Randy Newman songs on the ukulele, reads poems and children's books, displays his dubious paintings, and makes short films with his actor friends (including having a mutually distasteful bath with Hugo Weaving, but in different locations).

"I'm hopeless on the ukulele. I can't paint for nuts. I certainly can't write poetry, but I'm giving them all a go," Neill says.

Starting when he was on downtime on film sets, Neill has long been a gentle, amusing presence on social media; the animals at the vineyard have become stars in their own right, something that has surprised his son Tim, coming from such a "private and reserved person".

Now he is doing it to reassure people during these uncertain times of COVID-19.

"I just do all sorts of silly stuff that entertains me," Neill says.

"And if someone else who is also isolated and fearful and anxious gets some kind of enjoyment out of it, then it's worth doing.

"I've always thought that making wine is being in the cheering-up business, but now I have this responsibility to entertain people on social media because the world is just so miserable."

The first batch of 'very bloody good wine'

But it is to the mountains, over the Tasman, practically as far south as you can go, that he will return; to his vineyards, to the place he had been happy as a child.

Neill may seem like one of those people for whom everything has come easily, one of the rare few who has made it in the movies. Born with good looks, charm, class, with everything going for him; born lucky.

But as a boy, a migrant from the UK, sent to a posh but strict boarding school at the age of eight, he was shy and stuttered badly.

"I was a very quiet, nervous child," Neill says.

He was also called Nigel. Early on he decided he really wasn't a Nigel, he was a Sam and changed his name. It was in the holidays that the family would come here to Central Otago, skiing in the winter, camping and fishing in the summer.

And every year as they drove past this place his father — Major Dermot Neill, a stern military man who had served in the British Army in Italy in WWII — would mention how it was the perfect place for winemaking.

Decades later when he had his movie money, Sam Neill would do just that. "I actually sort of fulfilled that prophecy in a weird way."

Planting his first pinot grapes in the early 90s, what started as a "delightful diversion" has become a "crazy obsession".

He first tasted his own wine in 1997, hoping it was at least drinkable. To his astonishment it was "very bloody good".

It was then he realised, "I didn't just want to grow really good pinot, I actually wanted to make the greatest pinot in the world."

He has been accused of being a dilettante actor making wine as a hobby, something that irritates him, because in fact his family company Neill and Co have been wine and alcohol merchants in New Zealand since the 1860s.

"Winemaking is the only thing I've really formed any ambition for," Neill says.

"My acting career has always been muddling from one thing to another, and a lot of good luck."

Nevertheless, he has been in some of the most successful films of recent years and throughout his long career.

Now 72, Neill says it's "absurd" to think he's still in the industry, yet he's been working more than ever, including his star turn as the cantankerous Uncle Hec in the runaway hit Hunt for The Wilderpeople, Paddy Payne in Ride Like A Girl, Sweet Country, Peter Rabbit, Thor: Ragnorok and the upcoming Australian movie, Rams.

And yet says his son Tim, "You wouldn't know he was an actor by talking to him because he's the least dramatic person you'll ever meet".

In fact even when he was a young leading man, celebrated for his looks, Neill was never comfortable with the attention and adulation.

"He is habitually self-effacing and modest," says his older brother Michael, an emeritus English professor.

Neill admits, "I remember reading about myself with an immense embarrassment being described as the thinking women's crumpet and thinking 'are they talking about me? This is ridiculous'."

Neill's first take in Australian film

Being a plummy upper-middle-class British boy in a New Zealand school and having to adapt quickly because he was bullied, may have been Neill's first disguise, his first form of acting.

His extreme shyness meant he was "in the shadows quite a bit, observing people".

"And I think that stood me in good stead," Neill says.

But the career that shot him to international stardom was almost accidental.

In the "socially dull" New Zealand of that time there was no film industry and being an actor was not really an option.

He was working for the New Zealand Film Unit, a long-haired hippy making documentaries, when in 1977 director Roger Donaldson cast him in the action thriller Sleeping Dogs — the first colour feature film produced entirely in New Zealand.

The film came to the Sydney Film Festival where it was seen by Margaret Fink and Gillian Armstrong, who had been on a long search for Harry Beecham, the romantic lead in My Brilliant Career.

For Sam it was the beginning of a love affair with Australia and a whole world opened up to him.

"No-one told me Sydney was so beautiful," Neill remembers.

"There was rock 'n' roll in every corner pub and it was in the middle of this fantastic new wave of cinema."

It would also begin a close 40-year friendship with Bryan Brown, as at the age of 30 both their careers took off. They have since done six movies and a television series together. "He loves being involved in the Australian artistic community here," Bryan says.

The success of My Brilliant Career would launch the careers of everyone involved, all unknown at the time.

"It completely changed my life," Neill says.

Soon he was in London starring as the Antichrist Damien Thorne in the big-budget Omen III. It was on this film that he met Tim's mother, the Shakespearean actress Lisa Harrow, a relationship that lasted 10 years on-and-off.

There were the big Hollywood blockbusters like Hunt For Red October and Jurassic Park. But Neill admits he was never comfortable being in Hollywood.

He never wanted the entourage, the lack of privacy, or a security team. "I have never worked to be a celebrity," he says.

And Neill always returned to Australia to make lower budget, seminal films, often working with those directors he had been so in awe of.

Dead Calm, with Nicole Kidman, Jane Campion's The Piano, Evil Angels with Meryl Streep about Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, whose baby was taken by a dingo.

In 1987, on Dead Calm, he met the make-up artist Noriko Watanabe. "It was on an island and we had plenty of time on our hands," he told the Guardian in 2006. After they married he adopted her daughter, Maiko Spencer, and they had their own daughter, Elena.

It was while on duty at her school in Sydney that he and another "tuckshop dad", rock legend Jimmy Barnes, became friends.

In 1994, he met a son he had fathered in his 20s who had been adopted. He immediately became part of the family.

Neill says he was often an "absent father" because he travelled so much for his work.

"I think you could probably characterise my family life as being somewhat haphazard," he admits and jokes, "I should write a book about parenting, Sam Neill's Guide to Benign Neglect."

But Neill is now a grandfather of six and his adoration is obvious.

"They bring him great joy," son Tim says.

'She's in it for the wine, I'm in it for the politics'

Anyone who knows Neill knows that he is a man inclined towards humour.

"Sam's got a really funny sense of humour," Jimmy Barnes says. "We'll have chats and invariably he cracks himself up or he cracks me up.

"There have also been times when we've been ranting and raving and talked for a long time about political injustice."

Politics has always been a passion for Neill. "Canberra is like nowhere else on the planet, if you enjoy drama, boy, you've got to love Canberra," he tells Australian Story.

"They talk about the Canberra bubble, it's more like the Canberra circus tent. It's more than Shakespearean because they're just like crazy clowns, and all the clowns are armed.

"They've got knives and they are backstabbing."

Neill is deeply concerned at the moment about the plight of his community of people in the arts. Many are out of work as venues shut and productions are halted amid COVID-19 restrictions.

"Everyone I know in the arts is a freelancer and freelancers have fallen through the cracks," he says.

"The arts are in trouble and the arts are vital to any society."

When his marriage to Noriko ended in 2015, Neill says he was on his own for "quite a while" retreating to his "man cave" on the vineyard. Now he is in a relationship with ABC chief political correspondent Laura Tingle.

He can't resist joking, "My guess is that I'm in it for the politics. She's in it for the wine."

Twitter-famous farm animals

Before COVID-19, Neill delighted his Twitter followers with updates on the adventures of his animals.

Smooching his white Muscovy duck Charlie Pickering and taking walks with his pig Angelica. Other Twitter-famous farm animals include a calf called Graham Norton, the offspring of Helena Bonham Carter and James Nesbitt. Black-faced sheep and a platoon of chooks are named after famous actors.

"People have said that there is so much bad news that seeing a duck on Twitter makes them feel better. Now I feel a responsibility to provide light in a bleak world," he says.

"Whether or not there are people around I do find solace in company with my animals; I enjoy them.

"The conversation isn't all that riveting but very happy to be in each other's company."

Since 1993, Neill has bought three other small vineyards near the original Two Paddocks, and in 2006 was certified organic, which is a long, highly-regulated process.

"That is something I have been very committed to: around my vineyards, composting is everything," Neill says.

"I firmly believe in healthy soil, we use a lot of biodynamic techniques; I abhor chemicals and weed killers and that sort of thing.

"It kind of repels me."

And it is people that link his disparate careers — "If you've got great people you can make great wine and great movies. That is the most important component in both worlds."

Neill says his legacy will be the vineyards, not "old movies".

"I do hope and trust that they will long outlast me," he says.

But asked by Australian Story what he would like to be remembered for, he says, "I think it behoves us more than anything to be kind. In a broad sense and in an immediate sense, just to be kind."

Watch Australian Story's His Brilliant Careers on ABC iview or Youtube.

Credits

Producer: Vanessa Gorman

Feature writer: Susan Chenery

Photography: Vanessa Gorman, Simon Winter, Supplied: Sam Neill, IMDB

Camera: Simon Winter

Digital Producer: Megan Mackander

Topics: film-movies, human-interest, new-zealand, sydney-2000, canberra-2600

First posted