Sam Neill Hated His Real Name & Has No Regrets About Changing It At 11

May 02, 2023

Sam Neill, best known for his role in “Jurassic Park,” has acted in numerous films and TV shows and is well known for his versatility and talent in portraying a wide range of characters.

Born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, on Sept. 14, 1947, Neill spent most of his childhood in New Zealand after moving to Christchurch with his family in 1954. He attended the University of Canterbury, where he majored in English literature and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971. 

Neill’s breakthrough in film came in 1977 with the New Zealand movie “Sleeping Dogs.” The film was a political thriller set in a fictionalized version of New Zealand, and it marked the beginning of Neill's long and illustrious film career. In the early 1980s, he courted international recognition with his highly praised work in “Omen III: The Final Conflict” and “Possession.”

In 1993, Neill appeared in one of his most famous roles as Dr. Alan Grant in “Jurassic Park.” The film was a box office smash hit, grossing over $1 billion worldwide, and cemented Neill's status as a leading actor. He reprised the role of Dr. Grant in the franchise’s sequels “Jurassic Park III” and “Jurassic World Dominion.”

Throughout his career, Neill has worked with some of the biggest names in the film industry, including Steven Spielberg, Jane Campion and Taika Waititi. He has also acted in a variety of genres, including drama, comedy and science fiction. Some of his other notable films and TV shows include “The Piano,” “Dead Calm,” “The Hunt for Red October” and “Peaky Blinders.”

However, what many may not know was that the established actor wasn’t given the name Sam at birth. Instead, he chose to go by the moniker in a bid to avoid playground bullying many moons ago.

With such a wealth of experience in the entertainment industry, it comes as no surprise that Neill decided to pen them down in a memoir. Titled “Did I Ever Tell You This?” the book was released in March 2023 and included a plethora of as-yet-unknown snippets about the actor’s life. Among the bombshells, Neill revealed was the fact he had been undergoing treatment for stage-three blood cancer since 2022. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, he wrote in the book’s very first chapter:

“The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying. Suddenly … I have time to think. And writing, jotting thoughts and memories down, is a salve. It gets my mind off things.”

After the shock reveal, Neill appeared in a video on Instagram to put out the media firestorm. 

“My news seems to be all over the news at the moment and it’s sort of ‘Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!’ Which is slightly tiresome because as you see, I am alive and well and I have been in remission for eight months, which feels really good. And I’m alive and kicking and I’m going to work. I’m very happy to be going back to work,” Neill said and added he was working on a project with Annette Bening.

Neill told The Guardian the health scare had put some things into perspective for him.

“I’m not afraid to die but it would annoy me. Because I’d really like another decade or two, you know? We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature. And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big,” the father of four and granddad to eight remarked.

Meanwhile, his memoir included yet another shocker from his distant past.

In his book, Neill divulged that his real name was not, in fact, Sam, but Nigel John Dermot Neill. Neill wrote:

“The one thing I resent about my parents, the only thing, is that they called me Nigel. Anything, anything at all, other than Nigel. If there is a wetter name on the planet, I’ve never heard it. … Changing my name to Sam at the age of 11 was probably the best decision I made in my life. Sam is easy to say, sounds friendly, sounds a bit blokey, and has the touch of the labrador about it. … To land in a pretty tough playground in a New Zealand primary school with a plum in the voice and Nigel for a name was asking for trouble.”

In 2009, Neill told the Otago Daily Times he picked up the nickname Sam while at boarding school in Christchurch as there were three other Nigels there at the time and he didn’t want it to get confusing.

“I encouraged the nickname, because I thought I'd be slightly less likely to be victimised. I clung on to ‘Sam’ with great enthusiasm. ‘Nigel’ was a little effete for the rigours of a New Zealand playground,” Neill explained, ironically to a reporter who himself was named Nigel.

Neill said although he began writing after starting his cancer treatment, he never intended for it to become a “cancer book.” “I can’t stand them. I am never going to read another bloody cancer book in my life,” he told The Guardian and added:

“As I went on and kept writing, I realised it was actually sort of giving me a reason to live and I would go to bed thinking, I’ll write about that tomorrow… that will entertain me. And so it was a lifesaver really.”

What do you think of Sam Neill’s name change? Do you feel like picking up his memoir anytime soon? Let us know, and be sure to pass this along to friends and family too!