It would be hard for any actor to have had as successful a year at the box office as the one Sam Neill enjoyed in 1993 and still remain hidden in the shadows of fame.
Some performers–Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey come to mind–make a lot of money for movie studios here and you can’t walk past a newsstand without seeing their faces on the cover of a magazine. Neill, on the other hand, might still have trouble getting arrested in this town–to borrow a local cliche–despite having helped “Jurassic Park” and “The Piano” pull in a combined $400 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Nonetheless, the New Zealander, who exudes an appealing bloke-next-door charm on screen and in person, isn’t begging for wider recognition and, in fact, considers himself “plenty” successful, thank you.
He even has to stop and think for a few moments before hazarding a guess as to where exactly he might fit in the Hollywood firmament.
“I’m not a film star, but–putting all modesty aside–I’m a very successful film actor,” Neill says. “I’m personally comfortable with that. I’d be very uncomfortable being a big star.”
And you believe him when he says this, knowing that few other actors in this town could get away with uttering such heresy.
If he doesn’t seem to get the credit he deserves, perhaps it has something to do with the oversized characters with whom he’s had to share screen time.
In Steven Spielberg’s imaginative DNA drama, “Jurassic Park,” the largest grossing film in history (global receipts of $900 million), Neill played a wide-eyed paleontologist whose wildest fantasy comes true. He was convincing in the role but somewhat overshadowed by the robotic reptiles.
In “The Piano,” a surprise hit from Australia ($40 million in the U.S. and Canada), he was the cuckolded husband and farmer who couldn’t quite compete with the raw sexual magnetism possessed by a neighbor. Neill’s role was essential but it’s Harvey Keitel’s Maori tattoos that linger in memory.
Casting directors, however, do not forget Neill. They’ve helped the 47-year-old actor assemble a resume that includes such diverse entertainments as “My Brilliant Career,” “The Hunt for Red October” “Plenty,” “A Cry in the Dark,” “The Final Conflict,” “Dead Calm,” the British TV series “Reilly, Ace of Spies” and “In the Mouth of Madness,” just released in video.
A two-time winner of Australia’s Oscar equivalent for Best Actor, Neill can be seen in three new films this year. They are “Country Life,” now playing at the Fine Arts theaters; Mark Peploe’s romantic suspense story “Victory,” with Willem Dafoe; and “Restoration,” in which he plays King Charles II, opposite Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant, an old friend and co-star in last year’s sexy “Sirens.”
“Country Life” is Michael Blakemore’s liberal adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” set on a sheep ranch on the Australian frontier just after World War I. Neill plays a booze-loving country doctor who succumbs to the cosmopolitan charms of the wife of a disagreeable intellectual.
It is a romantic comedy of manners that does a good job of displaying Neill’s laid-back talents. Still, “Country Life” isn’t likely to threaten any box-office records set by “Jurassic Park” or force the actor into making unsavory choices based on a particular professional image.
“What turns certain people into big stars is that confusion between the part and the man,” Neill says. “To be a big star, you must have an image and then foster that image–and don’t deviate from it. Every time you do, you damage that image and damage your star status.
“I’ve never had an image, nor have I fostered one or wanted one, which has meant that I’ve had fantastic freedom to do whatever it is that appeals at the time.
“It also means that I don’t get paid $14 million a picture . . . sadly.”
OK, so his bank teller won’t confuse his account with those of Hollywood’s new clique of $20 million men. Does he, nonetheless, think he has achieved an acceptable level of fame?
“Plenty,” insists Neill, who can easily recall the days when a career in the movies was a remote career option.
“Acting was about the only thing that I was good at in school,” says Neill, who was born in Northern Ireland “before the troubles” and moved to New Zealand with his family at age 8, after his father finished a tour of duty with the army. “Then, at university, I did some acting, with, among others, Ngaio Marsh. . . . She did two great things in her life: She wrote detective stories and she directed Shakespeare. She was a major influence.
“When I left the university, I wanted to act and I would have liked to have gone to drama school . . . but there wasn’t one to go to, and there wasn’t really enough acting work to be done in New Zealand.”
In fact, back then, the country that would later produce directors Roger Donaldson, Peter Jackson and Jane Campion offered opportunities only in documentary filmmaking–and Neill had to pass a test to get a job as an intern in the national company.
“The idea was to confess to a lifelong passion for moviemaking, and I went in and lied,” he says with an easy laugh. “In fact, the idea had only occurred to me a week before. They took me on and I worked there for about seven years.”
That experience wasn’t wasted. Neill has produced a documentary on the growth of the New Zealand film industry, which was shown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“One of the things my documentary is about is the business of growing up without a cinema of one’s own, and what an achievement it is to finally produce films and have an audience,” he explains. “Films like `The Piano’ and `Heavenly Creatures’ are signal achievements, cultural achievements.”
In the late ’70s, Donaldson directed “Sleeping Dogs,” with Neill and the American actor Warren Oates, and “Smash Palace,” whose star, Bruno Lawrence, died earlier this summer. They were among the first New Zealand films to open in the U.S.
Movies from Australia were a more common import to these shores. It wasn’t until the “Mad Max” series and wildly popular “Crocodile Dundee,” however, that they escaped the art-house circuit.
Many Americans found an appealing commonality with their cinematic cousins from Down Under.
“When Australian films first started coming here, they used to dub them,” Neill recalls with amusement. “Mel voice in the first `Mad Max’ film was dubbed into an American voice. Australian isn’t hard to understand. If you can understand Paul Hogan, you can understand Australian.”
Americans and Australians share many of the same characteristics, he says, including “a sense of humor and the fact that we’re both post-frontier societies. We have the same mixed feelings about things European.”
This, in a sense, is what “Country Life” is about.
“It’s impossible to grow up until you see who you are and the validity of your own society,” he says. “That’s something that took us longer to accept than it did you. You had a revolution that sped things up.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the picture that won’t translate to America: the human comedy; there are romantic elements to it; the feeling of being stuck somewhere that isn’t quite where everyone else is.”
In the past year, Neill–an architecture enthusiast who spends much of his time away from movie sets visiting art galleries and cathedrals–has worked in seven countries. Although he considers New Zealand home and has a house in Australia, he isn’t often there.
Still, he gets points for maintaining contact.
“He keeps coming back, so he’s stayed popular in Australia,” says Christina Larmer, an Australian entertainment reporter based in Los Angeles. “By doing smaller movies and tele-movies, he stays in favor with Australians, which has been a problem with actors who take off to America.
“He’s one of the stars that’s been around as long as anyone can remember. He’s been in all the famous films that broke it overseas. I was actually quite surprised when he did break in America, because he’s not a Mel Gibson and he’s not the most gorgeous-looking man, but he’s certainly a good actor.”
Whatever Neill’s appeal is to audiences, it must be something that the industry’s top-drawer directors also find compelling. Besides Donaldson, Campion and Spielberg, Neill has worked with Gillian Armstrong, Fred Schepisi, Philip Noyce, Wim Wenders and John Carpenter.
“To be a good director, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, you have to be a son of a bitch,” says Neill. “You have to be, on the one hand, a decent human being–with an understanding of humanity. But you also have to have a streak of absolute iron ruthlessness.”
What about Spielberg, who many people perceive to be a warm-and-fuzzy sort of fellow?
“He’s smart, intelligent, really funny and a really decent, humane man,” said Neill. “But he’s also absolutely driven and has an absolute conviction about the correctness of his own vision. Nothing gets in the way of that.”
He says that he knew during production that “Jurassic Park” would be successful but wasn’t so sure about “The Piano.” Acting alongside Keitel, who plays the neighbor who strikes a cruel bargain with the farmer’s piano-playing wife (Holly Hunter), represented a real contrast in techniques.
“I’d like to think I don’t have a style of acting really,” he says. “I think my three Miramax films this year will demonstrate that to be so. I play entirely different characters in each one.
“I’m not one of those Method guys, but sometimes I wish I was. I’ve never been asked to shoot a radio like Harvey–in that great scene in `Bad Lieutenant,’ because it gives him bad news about a baseball game.
“I’d love to do that one day.”
