Sam Neill Quotations

I enjoy some physical stuff. But if I had a choice between playing a scene where it's raining, it's terribly cold, I'm wet and I'm being drowned and playing a scene with dinosaur eggs in a laboratory, I'd probably take the latter. It's warmer and generally more comfortable!

No intelligent man wears a moustache voluntarily - you can write that down.

I'm not big on Champagne, but I'd take along a bottle of Cristal to pop for when the boat comes to the rescue.

I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.

People turn into fools when they see a movie star and do weird things.

I go by the role pretty much. And I think the only genre I haven't gotten to do but I'd love to is a western, but no one has ever asked me to do that. Unfortunately they are very few and far between these days, but that is one type of film I'd love to do.

I've worked all my life to shed myself of any character.

As much as possible, I try to encourage people to use stunt men because that is really their job.

Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work.

I understand acting and I understand actors. I don't really understand the world of celebrity. That's just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I'm at sea with.

When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

Dexter' I'm very fond of. I got addicted to that.

I get very antsy and nervous if I don't know what the next job is.

If you want to learn about America, watch 'The Wire.' It's a profound piece of entertainment.

I can never really remember what I look like. I'm just sort of neutral. I don't think I'm sort of, you know, hideous.

When I started in films, it never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of acting.

The animatronics now are certainly more lifelike than before. They've advanced in exactly the same was as the CGI has. It is all really out of my area of expertise, but it definitely made my job a lot easier to act to something that was a lot more expressive, more real.

When you hear actors say, 'Oh, I did all my own stunts,' it is usually crap! It's one thing jumping into water or whatever, but the real stunts are more properly done by stunt men. And it is too financially risky to have actors risk their necks, isn't it?

There's part of me that loves traveling. And there's part of me that just loves staying home. It's a double-edged sword.

It's fairly hard to find gay drug dealers that aren't locked up or dead, or 23, so it's fairly oblique research. But I have some good contacts, not in the gay drug world but in the legal world, who spun me in the right direction.

I love the fact that you can't tell pinot noir what to do; it has to express itself. And it's always just beyond your grasp. If you do manage to get a hold of it, it's only for a fleeting moment.

I don't think I really have the insight or the inquiring to be an astronomer, and I don't think I have the wherewithal to be an astronaut. But if I had to choose which one I'd like to be, it would be the astronaut. I think it would be a wonderful thing to try.

Big budgets don't necessarily give you big films.

I think it took us all by surprise. I mean, I knew that people in New Zealand would like [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but no one really anticipated how much they would embrace it as it is. And it's playing widely in Australia now; they're running it as well. It's going to be interesting to see how it does it in the States, but I think if Sundance was any indication, I imagine it could do well.

You don't necessarily have to go a long way in New Zealand to be in some pretty dense and scary bush.

In the case of Wilderpeople, I walked on the first day with some apprehension actually; because it doesn't come anywhere close to anything I've really played before, this part.

This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.

You never really know who you're going to be acting with, but that doesn't really matter. 99% of the actors I've worked with, and they number in the thousands, I've liked.

I like actors. I like their insecurities, their humor and their intelligence.

I like being around actors. Imagine not liking actors.

Actors are easy to like. They are generally sociable, thoughtful people.

Nobody knows who Barry Crump is, anywhere, but in New Zealand he's huge. I am of that age, where I sort of grew up with Barry Crump books. Look, if you read the book, you realize it is actually not a funny book at all.

Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

If you want to learn about America, watch The Wire. Its a profound piece of entertainment.

I never met Barry Crump, but I was in an audience once for a play once. There was a drunken man at the back of the auditorium that was shouting during a performance of a one man play, and it turned out later on that was Barry Crump and he was in a state of inebriation.

Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.

The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner.

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.

[Hunt for the Wilderpeople] people seem to be just finding it hilarious in Sundance. I would think that judging on the feedback I get; it's a very warming film. It's not sentimental, but people are sort of heart warmed by a message that's pretty rare.

Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate.