Nicole Kidman has paid tribute to her “lifelong friend” Sam Neill following his sudden death.
“He was one of the greats…a pleasure to be with. We met when we were only 18, he took me under his wing and we remained lifelong friends,” the actress told The Sydney Morning Herald in a statement on Monday.
“He was a charming, kind, funny and intelligent man. He will be greatly missed. Our hearts go out to his family.”
Notably, the duo co-starred in the 1989 thriller film Dead Calm, playing a married couple.
Kidman’s breakout performance catapulted her to international stardom and launched her career in Hollywood.
Thirty years after their performance in the film, Kidman and Neil reunited in 2019 for a panel discussion on Big Little Lies.
The pair were joined by Laura Dern, Neil’s Jurassic Park co-star and Kidman’s co-star on the HBO show.
Neil’s family announced his death via Instagram on Monday.
“It is with great sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing in Sydney, Australia on Monday 13th July,” loved ones of the late actor wrote.
“Sam passed away surrounded by his family and with the dignity that characterized his life,” the statement continued. “Although the death was sudden and unexpected, the fact that Sam did not have cancer was a blessing.”
His family went on to say: “We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their excellent care.”
They concluded, “We will provide more details in due course, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you please respect their privacy as they work through this immeasurable loss.”
Neil’s death comes just two months after he announced he was cancer-free after a battle with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
When doctors told him that chemotherapy was no longer working, he was forced to look for alternatives, so he enrolled in a trial of CAR T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy that trains T cells to destroy cancer cells.
“I just had a test and there was no cancer in my body, which is unusual,” he told Australia’s 7 News in April, reflecting on the trial’s success. “I’m very, very excited that this is happening. Now it’s time to make another movie.”
The beloved actor previously said he was “not at all scared” of dying while battling cancer.
“I know I know, but I’m not really interested in it,” he said in 2023.
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