Sam Neill, who passed away at the age of 78 on Monday, was suffering pneumonia before his death, revealed a co-star.
'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' star reacts to Sam Neill's death
Rima Te Wiata, who starred alongside Neill in the 2016 Hunt for the Wilderpeople, shared with the New Zealand Herald that the actor was not scared of dying but that he would be "annoyed by it.
"It really sucks, actually," she said during her appearance at Ryan Bridge TODAY.
The We Were Dangerous actress shared that Neill would be quite frustrated over the fact that he suffered from pneumonia after battling cancer.
"I think he would be like: 'For goodness sake, I got over my cancer. And now look, now I get pneumonia. What next?'." But she added, "He's on his big journey now."
Details about the exact timeline of pneumonia were not revealed.
Sam Neill's death announcement
Sam Neill's family announced his death on Monday, noting, "The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free."
In 2023 memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, Neill revealed that he had stage-three non-Hodgkin lymphoma; however, he declared himself cancer-free in April, after several years of treatment for blood cancer.
Tributes have poured in globally for Neill, who was best known for his role playing paleontologist Alan Grant in Jurassic Park in 1993, alongside actors Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.
Sam Neill's health before his death
ABC journalist and former partner Laura Tingle said Neill's health had deteriorated in the weeks leading up to his death.
"His poor old body just sort of got a bit exhausted," she told ABC Radio Sydney.
She added, "He'd had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy and, thankfully, it finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he had, but that left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system."
Notably, Sam Neill had more than 150 screen credits to his name, including The Hunt for Red October, The Piano, Event Horizon, and Merlin. He also took up a role in the hit British series Peaky Blinders.
