TV stardom for Sam Neill, but 'this is just a silly dream’

Press, 13 September 1983, Page 17

TV stardom for Sam Neill, but 'this is just a silly dream’

From

DIANA DEKKER

in London

“I’m just a worker in the dream factory,” mused Sam Neill, lounging for the purpose of the interview across two chairs.

“You look very laid back, Sam,” remarked a passing employee of Thames Television, going to and fro in the interview room where Thames’ latest star was talking to his home press.

Neill, blue-jeaned, pink-jacketed, and clear-eyed, looked a world away from Sidney Reilly, the dangerous, woman-devouring spy he plays in Thames’ new blockbuster, “Reilly, Ace of Spades.” Neill has already made his mark in the movie world, primarily in one of Australia’s most distinguished films — “My Brilliant Career” — and also in “Omen 111 — The Final Conflict” and “Enigma.”

This time he is a real star — splashed across the pages of “British Vogue” for September, photographed by Lord Snowden, holding press conferences and giving interviews for Fleet Street and provincial press, and pictured in every periodical of any note in the television world. What does it feel like to be a film star?

“It’s all temporary, all ephemeral,” says the slightly nervous, 35-year-old New Zealander. “All of this is just some kind of silly dream, really. “There’s no point in getting excited — a great success or a great failure, it’s here today and gone tomorrow. You can say that about life but it’s much more exaggarated in this business.” So far, people do not recognise him the street, but that will change now the new series has begun. “And I won’t feel overwhelmingly pleased about that, but I’ll just have to take it philosophically.”

Just like he must feel about having charmed one of Fleet Street’s acknowledged lady dragons, Jean Rook of the “Daily Express,” into noting that Mr Neill, of the “narrowed steel lips and 45calibre eyes,” had “a devastating habit of leaning forward and searching your eyes for directions

when he’s lost.” “His Reilly,” she writes, “leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just spent the night with Mason, Bogart, George Raft, Edward Fox’s Jackal, and a particularly venomous and sexily symbolic snake.” In fact, Sam Neill looks and sounds exactly what he is — a well-brought up young New Zealander who went through Christ’s College, dabbled at university, and then went into movies with tenacity and flair. He went to university in Wellington and did “as little as possible,” finishing up with “a degree of sorts” in English. “It was a pretty tatty kind of degree but my time at university was more valuable not for what I absorbed at lectures but for what I experienced. It was an important time of my life.” In his last year at university he needed a philosophy unit but, having not attended a single lecture, realised three weeks before his final exams that he was going to fail it. The man who came to his rescue, and remains a firm friend, was John Clarke, better known as Fred Dagg. “I explained my predicament to him,” says Neill, “and he did two three-hour sessions with me going,

through the basics of philosophy. I passed on the strength of that. “That probably says something for the professorial qualities of J. Clarke and my improvisational attributes. He’s in Melbourne, writing film scripts, a marvellously creative man.” Neill’s friends are almost all New Zealanders, either in London or still at home. He believes in “long-established friends.” The material benefits of his new status appear not to concern him. More money really means a car that is unlikely to break down on his way to work. It also means that he can collect New Zealand paintings, as well as New Zealand prints. “I’m very keen on Ralph Hotere, who is also a friend of mine. I’ve got a Gretchen Albrecht. I’d like a very good Hanly, but that may still be out of my price range. I still think McCahon is the greatest painter we’ve ever produced. Occasionally even a place like New Zealand can produce a true visionary.” Hanly paintings would not be out of his price range if he takes up the American offers that have flooded in since his casting as Reilly. “I’m resisting,” he says. “I’m not anti-fame or anti-money. It’s just that what I’ve been offered is not at all interesting: a lot of money to do some really awful stuff. “For instance, I was offered a part in ‘Dynasty’ last week; two years opposite Joan Collins. I can’t think of anything I’d sooner not do. They say you make about two million dollars a year on that. ‘l’d sooner be on the dole. I’d sooner be doing work that interests me, that keeps me awake.” Neill says that he found the gap between his life in New Zealand and his life now “a psychological distance.” The chief problem New Zealanders have when they go out into the world is modesty. “We’re such a deferential people. We automatically assume that

everyone is better than we are. It applies to a lot of things. I’ve been asked how New Zealanders ever get out of the country — how they pluck up the courage to buy a ticket. I sympathise with Richard Hadlee when he says that the problem of our cricket team is that it’s too nice.

“It’s a personal quality New Zealanders have. Just as dangerous is the other side of the coin — that we’re self-satisfied and smug. We’re firmly convinced that New Zealand is the greatest little country in the world, which is abolsutely bloody nonsense.

“It infuriates me that New Zealanders travel through other countries but are not changed by the experience.”

New Zealand is not even the most beautiful country in the world, though parts of it are very beautiful, “but we are doing our best to make sure they do not stay that way for long.” He had left New Zealand, he says, for two reasons.

“The first is that New Zealand is not the only place in the world. The second is that it’s absolutely necessary to strive for some kind of excellence in the wider marketplace. “It’s only by pitting yourself against a place like this that you can get over the crippling burden of false modesty. That’s why Reilly has been an interesting exercise.

“It terrified me at the start when we were casting it and I knew I was going to have to act opposite some of the best actors in the country. I wasn’t by any means convinced I was good enough. You have to deal with that.

“The truth is there’s no point in messing about.. I was as good then as I am now. I don’t say I’m the best actor in the world but I am good enough. It’s only when you know that that you can hit stride. I didn’t hit stride until I left New Zealand.” He has no idea of how his life

will develop from here. “Occasionally this causes me some anxiety because of something one is ingrained with to the point of tedium in New Zealand — the notion of security. “It may be a boring job but it’s secure; that it’s secure is seen as the thing that matters in the end.

“One can understand it in a country which has seen a depression but it’s a very stultifying attitude and suppresses the sense

of adventure in all of us.” All the same, he thinks that he would like to live in New Zealand again one day — “or at least that part of the world” — but as an international commuter. Meanwhile he lives “on and off” with the actress Lisa Harrow and their baby son, and commutes to France to co-star with Jodie Foster and Michael Ontkean in “Les sang des autres,” under the direction of Claude Chabrol.