The Jurassic Park Moment That Made Sam Neill Feel Really Famous

From any angle, Sam Neill has had a tremendous career. Ninety-nine percent of other actors would swap out their IMDB with his in a second, but despite regularly working for decades and fronting one of the most well-liked and successful blockbusters of all-time, he’s not one of those stars that’s too famous to go about his daily life. He doesn’t regard himself as a celebrity and rarely feels like it, at least when he’s not a Comic-Con.

Sam Neill recently talked to The Observer about his life, plans to shoot Jurassic Park being interrupted and how he views his success. During the chat, the actor admitted he doesn’t typically feel his fame but said he does have one really vivid memory with a large group of fans. Here’s a portion of his quote…

I have never regarded myself as a celebrity, and I don’t feel I have ever been massively famous over here, on my side of the world. The only thing that really blindsided me was the huge Comic-Con gathering of fans for Jurassic Park. People went ballistic. There is a big concentration of a certain type of people. Very nice people, but one type.

As someone who has been to Comic-Con plenty of times in the past (unfortunately not this year), I can attest to what a weird experience it can be, even as an observer. It’s almost like a sporting event. Normally in life, most of us have some degree of restraint because we don’t want to be visibly way more excited than everyone else. At Comic-Con, however, everyone else is usually freaking out, which allows everyone else to turn off their own filters. So, the noise and the excitement often just builds and builds. It’s unreal and not surprising Sam Neill has such vivid memories.

Of course, what we all want Sam Neill to be doing right now is shooting Jurassic World III. The acclaimed actor was supposed to be doing that this month, but the worldwide mess we’re all dealing with has gotten in the way of that, which obviously sucks for all of us, even if it would have forced Neill to be awake a little earlier.

I should be going into Pinewood at 6am. All the sets are there, waiting.

Fortunately, whenever Jurassic World is ready, fans will be eagerly waiting. The popular franchise has carved out its own path, with some tie-ins to the original films, but the next installment, Dominion, looks like it’s going to bring everything together once and for all (or maybe not?). That’s incredibly exciting for fans of the franchise, and if the world is able to get back to normal, it will hopefully produce at least one more gathering to remind Sam Neill of how many fans he has and how appreciative we all are of the incredible work he’s put in over the years, including in non-Jurassic Park projects like The Piano, Peaky Blinders and my personal favorite, The Tudors.