SAM NEILL: REST IN PEACE. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

SAM NEILL: REST IN PEACE.

BY SANDRA HARRIS.

I was genuinely shocked and saddened (crikey, now I sound like a phoney, cliche-ridden politician) to hear this morning that the actor Sam Neill had died. I've both admired and fancied him ever since I first saw him in a made-for-television film in the 'Eighties sometime.

The Sunday afternoon film was one of the highlights of my week, distracting me as it did from school bullies and the mountain of homework our teachers seemed to think was okay to pile on us, even though we spent six-and-a-half hours of every day in school as it was.

Anyway, the film was Ivanhoe (1982), based on the 1819 novel of the same name by Sir Walter Scott, and Sam Neill was so handsome in it as Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert that I was immediately enchanted. Thus began a crush that lasted to this very day, the sad day of his death, but it definitely won't end here. My heart will go on, lol.

Although everyone knows Sam Neill as hailing from New Zealand, he was actually born in Ireland. Well, Northern Ireland, anyway, County Tyrone to be precise, so we can actually claim him as one of our own. He and his parents moved to New Zealand, his father's home country, when he was about seven and the rest, as they say, is history.

One of my favourite cinematic memories of him is when he starred as a grown-up Damien Thorn in Omen 3: The Final Conflict (1979). The third film in The Omen series of films sees him play the spawn of the devil as a handsome, charming and sophisticated businessman with, obviously, plans for world domination.

He has the kind of sexy grin that would have a helpless female such as myself in a proper tizzy in the twinkling of an eye, and he uses it to great effect here. Remember the scene with him on the bridge, all togged out in his posh bloke hunting gear, complete with cravat, ready to smite his enemy with his pack of bloodthirsty doggies?

'Take him,' he says ever so casually to his mutts, who obligingly tear the poor man who was trying to bring down Damien limb from limb. He's so fupping sexy in this film, and he also has sex with a TV presenter in it, who's played by an actress with whom he ended up having a son in real life, capisce?

I love him in Possession (1981), a really intriguing, sexy and strange psychological horror film. Though Isabelle Adjani as Anna definitely steals the show, Sam Neill is also terrific as the spy that comes home to his West Berlin apartment to find that his beautiful wife is having an affair. With a gruesome, terrifying twist...

In 1983, he acted in a film based on the book by one of Ireland's- at the time- most controversial authors. The author was Edna O'Brien, and the book was The Country Girls (1960), the first book in a trilogy that also included The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in their Married Bliss (1964).

The controversy stemmed from the fact that the books were probably the first by an Irish writer to deal with sexual matters (Shock horror! In holy Catholic Ireland? Surely not!) and social issues.

Sam Neill played Mr. Gentleman, the married man who has sex with the main character, the naive and innocent Cait (pronounced Cawche), and then backtracks on his promises to leave his wife for her, the bastard. Cait is destroyed but we the viewers could see it coming a mile off. For shame, Mr. Gentleman. For shame...

In 1988, he starred opposite Meryl Streep in one of my favourite movies, A Cry in the Dark, also known as Evil Angels. Also known colloquially as A Dingo Ate my Baby. It's the story of a religious married couple, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain, who take their children camping in the Australian Outback.

When their nine-week-old baby Azaria goes missing from their tent during a barbecue, suspicion falls on Lindy and Michael, particularly on Lindy. Australia is divided on whether or not they killed their own baby, and the stress the couple are under is more than we can probably ever imagine.

NB, Sam Neill has a fine pair of pins in this in shorts and knee-length socks, lol.

In The Piano, Jane Campion's 1993 masterpiece, he plays an olde-timey settler who takes delivery of a mail-order bride, a piano-playing, mute Scottish woman with a young daughter, and then gets horribly jealous when she promptly takes up with Harvey Keitel, who plays their neighbour.

Sam Neill has a truly terrifying scene with Holly Hunter, who plays the wife, involving an axe and an index finger, but people probably remember the film most for 'Harvey Keitel running around in the nip,' as per Graham Norton as Fr. Noel Furlong in clerical sitcom Father Ted...! We have dibs on Father Ted as well, it's Irish and it's ours, lol.

Sam Neill is probably best remembered for his recurring role as palaeontologist Dr. Alan Grant in the dinosaur movies, the much beloved Jurassic Park/World series of films, the original of which came out in 1993. It was the first film I ever took my baby daughter to the cinema to see, though she spent most of the film under her chair playing with other people's rubbish...!

I've just re-watched the clip where Dr. Grant and his working partner, played by Laura Dern, see the dinosaurs for the first time. They're in their little jeep thing. Dr. Grant pulls off his sunglasses and, without taking his eyes off the brontosaurus, he puts his hand on Laura Dern's head and turns it round so she can see what he's seeing. Her reaction is priceless.

Tears sprang immediately to my eyes and I got chills all over my body, watching this iconic scene again. It's a combination of a lot of things: their obvious joy and disbelief, the familiar, soaring musical score, the appearance of Richard Attenborough (looking disturbingly like an ex of mine) as the billionaire island-owner who's played God with science and has inadvertently created a nightmare for humanity with his recreated monsters.

Although, in hindsight, one wonders what the bloody hell he thought was gonna happen when he tampered with nature? Everyone knows that there's a perfectly cromulent reason why dinosaurs did not co-exist alongside human beings all those years ago. D'oh!

Oh, and Sam Neill also plays Molloy the cat burglar in the hilarious episode of The Simpsons known as Homer the Vigilante. Sam was a big fan of the show and he considered this cameo to be one of the highlights of his long and fruitful career.

Ah Sam! I'll miss you, with your sexy, quirky grin, your dry humour and your lovely thick dark hair that was never out of place. Rest in peace now and also rest assured that you will never be forgotten...