Cancer-stricken Jurassic Park star Sam Neill has detailed his heartbreaking health battle as he revealed how close to death he was after chemotherapy stopped working.
The 78-year-old acting legend was open about his five year battle with stage-three blood cancer in a new interview with Australia network 7 News.
Neill said: ‘I’ve been living with a particular type of lymphoma for about five years and I was on chemotherapy and the pretty miserable business but it was keeping me alive.
‘Then the chemo stopped working. I was at a loss and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal obviously.’
Neill is best known for playing Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise and says he is now cancer free thanks to a cutting edge treatment – called CAR T-cell therapy -which genetically modifies blood cells.
He said: ‘I’ve just had a scan just now and there is no cancer in my body, that’s an extraordinary thing. I’m very, very excited that this can happen.’
Cancer-stricken Sam Neill has detailed his heartbreaking health battle as he revealed how close to death he was after chemotherapy stopped working
Neill is best known for playing Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise; as he is pictured left to right with Joseph Mazzello, Laura Dern, and Ariana Richards in the original 1993 film
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a personalized immunotherapy that genetically modifies a patient’s own T-cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells, primarily used for blood cancers according to the National Cancer Institute.
The treatment is currently in clinical trials to treat another blood cancer, myeloma.
Hematologist Professor told the 7 News: ‘ [We] turbocharge those cells to then be able to now recognise the myeloma, which was not visible to the immune system before and then jump on it and kill it.’
With his new lease on life, Neill is now planning to make a return to acting.
He said: ‘It’s time I did another movie.’
Neill first went public with his cancer diagnosis in 2023 after being diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma the previous year after initially experiencing swollen gland.
He found out about as his stage-three blood cancer while he promoted Jurassic World Dominion in 2022.
In that film he reprised his role as Grant alongside original co-stars Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
The 78-year-old acting legend was open about his five year battle with stage-three blood cancer in a new interview with Australia network 7 News
Neill said: ‘I’ve been living with a particular type of lymphoma for about five years and I was on chemotherapy and the pretty miserable business but it was keeping me alive’
He added: ‘Then the chemo stopped working. I was at a loss and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal obviously’
Neill pictured alongside Dern
He told Australian Story at the time: ‘I’m not in any way frightened of dying. That doesn’t worry me. It’s never worried me from the beginning, but I would be annoyed.
‘I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do. Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.’