Did I Ever Tell You This (AF)

Sam Neill

ISBN 10: 1922790303 / ISBN 13: 9781922790309

Published by Text Publishing, Australia, 2023

About this Item

This copy is very close to new. For over forty years, Sam Neill's name has been a reassuring mark of quality. With starring roles in hit movies like Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, The Piano and Jurassic Park, Sam's work has taken him from arthouse to blockbuster, and from cult classics to TV hits like Peaky Blinders. Few actors have proved as versatile, nor so well-loved. Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Sam emigrated to New Zealand with his close-knit family at the age of seven. At school in Christchurch he discovered he was hopeless at sport, but loved acting. Following a breakthrough role in Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career in 1979, Sam found his way, sometimes by accident, to his own brilliant career and Hollywood's A-list, working alongside a stellar list of actors, writers and directors. In Did I Ever Tell You This? he invites you in, sharing stories from an extraordinary life with charm, honesty, good humour, and a wry appreciation of the absurd. Moving and often laugh-out-loud funny, this is the inspirational story of a man who, when life knocks him down, stands up again. (TM).

Seller Inventory # 051068

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Did I Ever Tell You This (AF)
• Publisher: Text Publishing, Australia
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1922790303
• ISBN 13: 9781922790309
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Autobiography
  • Aotearoa, New Zealand
  • Non Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the world’s most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion.

By his own account, his career has been a series of unpredictable turns of fortune. Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, he emigrated to New Zealand at the age of seven. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island, but young Sam was sent away to boarding school in Christchurch, where he was hopeless at sports and discovered he enjoyed acting.

But how did you become an actor in New Zealand in the 1960 and 1970s where there was no film industry? After university he made documentary films while also appearing in occasional amateur productions of Shakespeare. In 1977 he took the lead in Sleeping Dogs, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade, a project that led to a major role in Gillian Armstrong’s celebrated My Brilliant Career.

And after that Sam Neill found his way, sometimes by accident, into his own brilliant career. He has worked around the world, an actor who has moved effortlessly from blockbuster to art house to TV, from Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movies to The Piano and Peaky Blinders.

Did I Ever Tell You This? is a joy to read, a marvellous and often very funny book, the work of a natural storyteller who is a superb observer of other people, and who writes with love and warmth about his family. It is also his account of his life outside film, especially in Central Otago where he established Two Paddocks, his vineyard famous for its pinot noir.