Just two months before his death, Sam Neill announced that he was cancer-free after a years-long battle.
But the treatment took a toll on his body, according to new revelations by those who knew him.
After the Jurassic Park star passed away at age 78 on Monday, July 13, a former co-star revealed he had been battling pneumonia in the weeks before his passing, while Neill’s ex-girlfriend shared new details about the toll years of cancer treatment had taken on his body.
Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, actress Rima Te Wiata – who starred with Neill in the 2016 adventure comedy-drama Hunt for the Wilderpeople- revealed that he had pneumonia before his death. “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?'”
Te Wiata did not specify how recently she had seen the actor and his family has not identified pneumonia as his official cause of death. Neill’s former partner, Australian journalist Laura Tingle, also reflected on his declining health during an appearance on ABC Radio Sydney’s Sydney Mornings.
“The bottom line is he’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years intensively,” she said. “That takes a toll on anybody’s body.” Although Neill had beaten his stage III blood cancer, Tingle explained the treatment had weakened him. “Thankfully, it had finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he had. But that left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system, and I think his poor old body sort of got a bit exhausted.”
Tingle 65, dated the actor from 2018 to 2021 and paid tribute to Neill in an Instagram post following his death, writing, “Sweet Dreams darling Sam.”