Rima Te Wiata, a New Zealand actor who starred alongside Sam Neill in 2016's Hunt for the Wilderpeople, has revealed he was battling a common yet deadly lung disease before his death.
As reported by the New Zealand Herald, Te Wiata revealed he was fighting pneumonia. This came after Neill had been cancer-free in just April after years of fighting non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
"It really sucks actually," she said. "I think he would be like: 'For goodness sake, I got over my cancer. And now look, now I get pneumonia. What next? But he's on his big journey now."
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, pneumonia is shockingly common. In 2022 alone, there were over 1.2 million visits to emergency departments because of pneumonia. As well as this, over 40,000 people died in that year.
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Te Wiata Recalled Sam Neill as a Co-Star
Te Wiata also shared a touching description of Sam Neill. "He was a very steady, peaceful, grounding man," she recalled. "He was more like a lovely gardener, someone who was doing the vege garden or something. There was sort of a gentlemanly demeanour that went along with it."
She continued, "He had really good instincts and a really good spirit. He had a lot of empathy and those qualities really helped him find the dramatic..."
"He had compassion for his characters. Even if they were awful, he knew how to understand things from their perspective."
She added that his breakout film, Sleeping Dogs, was his "passport to a non-stop rollercoaster international career which he had no model to work with because he was the first big film star from New Zealand."
According to Fox News, other co-stars and directors also shared their condolences after the passing of Sam Neill.
Steven Spielberg wrote about how he "adored making all the Jurassic movies with him," adding that "along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world."
Laura Dern said that Sam Neill showed her "the depths of loyalty, protectiveness, and love, always with the driest of wit." She added, "He was a true and noble gentleman, wrapped up in my dream leading man."
