We all know Sam Neill for his involvement in the Jurassic Park franchise, but it turns out he was almost involved in another blockbuster series.
In an interview with CinemaBlend, the New Zealand actor spoke about the time he auditioned for a role as James Bond –– even though he really didn’t want the part.
“I did that with extreme reluctance,” he revealed. “The entire thing was mortifying, and luckily I never heard from them again.”
Neill auditioned for the role in the late 1980s, in the lead-up to the Bond film The Living Daylights, the first one to star Timothy Dalton.
In the interview, he said that it was his agent who really wanted him to audition: “I think that was the last thing I allowed my then agent to bully me into.”
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“Because I said to her, ‘Listen, I do not want to be James Bond,” he continued. “And I particularly don’t want to be that James Bond that everybody says, ‘Look, there’s James Bond in the corner of the restaurant. He’s the one I don’t like.'”
If you’re trying to imagine Neill as the legendary super spy, you won’t have to try to hard. A small snippet of his screen test was included in a behind-the-scenes documentary from 2000 for The Living Daylights, showing him in an unbuttoned dress shirt, holding a gun, and greeting a woman in bed.
It turns out that almost the whole crew were impressed with Neill’s portrayal of Bond, so it can’t have gone as badly as he felt.
In the documentary, series producer Michael G. Wilson says: “All of us were impressed with Sam Neill, and very much wanted to use him. Like a lot of things in life, it was a close race.”
Of course, Timothy Dalton was the one who landed the role in the end. A few years later, Neill was cast in Jurassic Park, and the rest is history!
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Recently, Neill spoke about the age difference between him and Laura Dern when they were both cast in the dinosaur-centric franchise.
“I am 20 years older than Laura!” Neill, now 74, told The Sunday Times. “Which at the time was a completely appropriate age difference for a leading man and lady!”
The pair were cast as palaeobotanist Dr Ellie Sattler and palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant, playing love interests in the movie.
At the time, Dern was only 23 and Neill was 42. The 20-year age gap did not worry the pair, but now as they look back, Neill jokes that it was far from “appropriate”.
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