Sam Neill reveals his secret battle with stage 3 blood cancer in his upcoming memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?”
The 75-year-old “Jurassic Park” star recalled experiencing swollen glands a year ago while doing press for “Jurassic World Dominion.”
He said he was soon diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, undergoing chemotherapy until he switched to a new drug he expects to take every month for the rest of his life.
“The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying,” he writes in the first chapter of his book, which comes out Tuesday. “I may have to speed this up.”
He said he never intended to write a memoir, but started doing so during treatment last year, as he realized it “was actually sort of giving me a reason to live.”
“I found myself with … nothing to do,” Neill explained to the Guardian in an interview published Friday.
“And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’”
Neill says he is now cancer-free, though he does rely on the monthly chemotherapy drug.
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” he admitted. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends. Just pleased to be alive.”
The actor rose to international fame in 1993 with his role as Dr. Alan Grant in “Jurassic Park.” He played the same character in “Jurassic Park III” (2001) and “Jurassic World Dominion” (2022).
His most recent acting credit is “Assassin Club,” due out next month. He is slated to appear in several upcoming projects, according to his IMDb page.
In a statement to The Post on Friday, a rep for Neill said, “He is very well and back at work starring opposite Annette Bening in the upcoming limited series ‘Apples Never Fall.’”