Sam Neill you believed in us

It is no longer a trivial thing that a person makes their fortune in the world and still chooses to invest and stay in the land of their childhood, New Zealand. For this, and many other good reasons, we can all be proud of Sam Neill.

Sam Neill is of course most famously remembered as one of the most successful actors that Australasia has ever produced. 

To go through just a couple of personal highlights, Sleeping Dogs was the film adaptation of the novel Smith’s Dream. Released into theatres in 1977, it imagined a New Zealand with a strong communist insurgency and resultant U.S. military occupation to wipe them out, invited in by an authoritarian Prime Minister. With the U.S. war in Vietnam just completed and U.S. military occupation still underway in Cambodia, and only two years after the Australian Prime Minister was sacked after pressure from the CIA for setting out a properly independent foreign policy away from the chaos the U.S. had produced right across South East Asia, this movie was both successful but it was also deadly real to us in New Zealand. 

It was a breakout role for Sam, for Director Roger Donaldson his lifelong friend, and for future commercial film-making in New Zealand. 

The Piano, shot on the serene and wild west coast beaches of Auckland, was a powerful performance for Sam Neill as his character shifted from dutiful and upright new-settler husband to a defensive and jealous loser in a colonial romantic contest. 

This too was a breakout role for the Director Jane Campion, gained three Academy Awards, and many more afterwards. It was very important as a showcase of Auckland’s future film locations.

Finally, Hunt for the WIlderpeople in 2016. In the adult lead role Sam Neill got to do that beautiful gruff-old-man-revealed-as-caring-and fundamentally-good character, this time deep inside our Uruwera forest helping to rescue a lost child, under the direction of breakout Director Taika Waititi. On an miniscule $2.5m to make it grossed $30 million globally. It didn’t make it at the Oscars but was strong in the U.S. festival circuit.

But many others can comment on his professional career.

It barely need mentioning that he was a very long and deep Labour supporter, both within the New Zealand screen industry and for Prime Ministers Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern.

Sam and his team built up Two Paddocks, which consists of four certified organic vineyards near Alexandra and Bannockburn. He once quipped that the fastest way to make $5 million is to take $10 and buy a winery. 

He had grown up in Dunedin, and had a strong calling to invest for the long term into Central Otago and to do it in style. 

I will make sure I raise a glass of Two Paddocks Pinot Noir to him this Friday with the drinks team.

He made his voice clear for the environment and for conservation. 

He was a founding patron of the Sustainability Council, one of those Wellington lobbies that tries to make the case for a durable and sustainable New Zealand, with a particular focus on projects such as genetic engineering opposition, water quality, carbon trading and its failings, and many more. 

He stood up strong against the absurd Central Otago open cast Bendigo Mine that as of writing is still going through its Fast Track rubber-stamping process. 

Many  – indeed now most  – New Zealanders who make it big somewhere tend not to return. But Sam held New Zealand and in particular Otago deep in his heart right throughout his career as he bounced between Australia and his international acting projects for over 40 years. It is a big deal to be a massive global film star, and still believe right to your core in New Zealand, and prove it within enduring investment.

I’ll leave the character descriptions to others, but his commitment to and expression of New Zealand is simply there to see across decades gone and decades to come.

I am really glad that Sam Neill told our stories well, that he reinvested his success back in New Zealand, and that despite all his global success he still chose us and believed in us.

Cheers Sam you are a legend.