[Source: Reuters]

Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known for playing paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in dinosaur blockbuster “Jurassic Park” and whose career included more than 50 movies, has died at the age of 78.

A post shared on social media by his family said Neill’s death ​in Sydney “was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.” In April, Neill announced he was ‌cancer free after a public battle with blood cancer.

Described by critics as “versatile” and “reliably excellent”, Neill landed starring roles across many genres, ranging from a submarine officer in the 1990 action-thriller “The Hunt for Red October” to the anti-Christ in 1981’s Omen III.

He also played countless anguished husbands, including opposite Holly Hunter in the Oscar-winning “The Piano” (1993) and opposite Meryl Streep ​in 1988’s “Evil Angels”, also known as “A Cry in the Dark”.

Born in Omagh, a town in Northern Ireland, Nigel John Dermot Neill moved to ​New Zealand when he was seven as his father, a New Zealander, retired from the army and wanted to ⁠return home.

At the age of 11, he changed his name to Sam. In his 2023 memoir “Did I ever tell you this?” he wrote that “to ​land in a primary school with a plum in the voice and Nigel for a name was asking for trouble.”

Sam was “easy to say, sounds friendly, sounds ​a bit blokey and has a touch of Labrador about it,” he wrote.

Neill described himself as a wonky, nerdy, unsporty, stuttering boy, but it was at school that he took his first tentative steps towards acting, earning minor roles in school plays including a bridesmaid in The Pirates of Penzance. “I liked getting a laugh,” he wrote in the ​book.

Neill’s big break came with the low-budget New Zealand film “Sleeping Dogs” (1977), garnering him sufficient attention to be offered roles in bigger-budget films in neighbouring ​Australia.

But even as his fame grew, he continued to return to New Zealand to work. At home, he was perhaps most adored for his role as the curmudgeon Hector ‌in ⁠the low-budget “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (2016) directed by Taika Waititi.