Sam Neill
Refined, complex, easy to enjoy. They’re just some of the qualities that draw people to pinot noir, the speciality of New Zealand’s Two Paddocks winery. But they could just as well describe its owner, the beloved actor Sam Neill. He’s been producing his favourite drop for the best part of 27 years, and gracing our screens for more than 40.
But while experts will tell you pinot noir does not tend to age particularly well, the same could not be said for Mr Neill, who, it must be said, has aged phenomenally. At 72, he has the face of a man at least 10 years younger.
“Sorry, I’m still in my pyjamas,” he says, as he greets us over video in the midst of the nationwide lockdown. “But there didn’t seem to be any rush to get up and out today.”
Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, Neill arrived in Australia in the ’70s during what felt like a pivotal cultural moment. It was the decade that gave us the Sydney Opera House, as well as iconic Australian films Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mad Max and My Brilliant Career, in which Neill delivered a breakthrough performance alongside Judy Davis.
And yet throughout a career that has spanned more than four decades, he has nurtured an almost pathological aversion to the spotlight. The year he starred as Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, the highest grossing film of 1993, he headed not for Hollywood but for the wilderness of Central Otago, where he planted the first grapes at Two Paddocks.
Still, he is almost universally admired,
