Jurassic Park Actor Sam Neill Is Cancer Free

Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill said he is cancer free after five years of fighting blood cancer.

“I’ve just had a scan just now and there is no cancer in my body, that’s an extraordinary thing,” the New Zealand native told Australia 7NEWS.

Neill was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of T-cell lymphoma in 2022. He experienced a remission in 2023, though as he warned at the time, his prognosis included a high likelihood that the cancer would come back. Based on the timing of an Instagram Story in 2025 celebrating eight months of remission, the cancer did return at least once around 2024.

But Neill has had prolonged success with an experimental — and promising — new treatment called CAR-T, which he’s now campaigning for the Australian government to fund through its public health system.

CAR-T stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell Therapy, and it’s indicated for blood cancers while also showing promise for some solid tumors, and as the New Yorker recently reported, now autoimmune diseases. T-cells are a type of white blood cell, and CAR-T therapy modifies the body’s own T-cells so that they can do things like fight cancer. “It’s science at its best,” Neill said.

But the T-cells have to be trained on the patient’s unique cancer. There’s no standardized dosing; every patient has to send their own T-cells to the lab, where they receive personalized modifications. In other words, it’s wildly expensive.

Currently, CAR-T is only available to Australians enrolled in clinical trials — or those willing to pay private prices. The same 7NEWS segment featured a man who flew to America and paid $750,000 — the cost without insurance — for the treatment. Neill is pushing for CAR-T to be added to Australia’s subsidized treatment system so patients don’t have to travel abroad or pay out of pocket.

He is also considering a return to Hollywood, one that would go past that throwback Super Bowl commercial.

“It’s time I did another movie,” he said.