This is how he tells it in his biography “Have I ever counted this?”, which is published this week in the United Kingdom.
El actor Sam Neill, who became known worldwide for the role of the paleontologist Alan Grant en Jurassic Park, revealed this week that he is undergoing treatment for stage three blood cancer.
It was during a series of interviews that he recounted the first chapter of his memoir, entitled “Did I ever count this?“, which will go on sale in the United Kingdom next week. “The thing is, I am a thief. Possibly dying,” begins the first chapter of the book. “Maybe I have to rush this,” he continues.
Neill began to write some notes on his life as a way to keep busy, and as a relief, while undergoing treatment over the past year.
“I found myself with nothing to do,” Neill said in the interview. “And I am used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all that stuff. And suddenly I was deprived of it. And I thought, ‘what am I going to do?‘” he told The Guardian.
“I never intended to write a book. But as I went on and on writing, I realized that I was actually giving myself a reason to live, and I would go to bed thinking, ‘Tomorrow I’ll write about it…it. will entertain me.” a real lifesaverBecause I couldn’t have gone through that with nothing to do,” he said.
Neill first noticed a series of bulging glands on her neck last year during a publicity tour of the film Jurassic World: Dominiothe sixth installment of the dinosaur franchise.
When doctors told him what was wrong, he said his reaction was “rather phlegmatic” but it made him “take stock.” “I thought I had to do something and I thought: ‘Should I start writing?’“, account.
The book
“I didn’t think I had a book in me, I just thought I’d write some stories. And I found it more and more fascinating.” “A year later, not only did I write the book, but it came out in record time”he told the BBC.
He said his book is not a memoir about cancer, but that his illness forms a “spiral thread” through the narrative. Specifically, the doctors diagnosed him “a ferocious type of aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a less common cancer that develops in the lymphatic system, the vast network of vessels and glands in the body. Neill received chemotherapy, but when it began to fail, he embarked on a new type of medication. that you will continue to receive monthly for the rest of your life.
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” he said. But those dark moments have made me grateful for each day and immensely grateful for all my friends. Just glad to be alive,” he added.
One of the things she misses the most is her hair. He recounts that he lost it after the first round of chemotherapy, and writes in his memoirs that when he looks in the mirror, “there’s a bald, withered old man there.” “More than anything, I want my beard back. I don’t like the look of my face one bit.” In fact, he at one point thinks the book’s subtitle might have been ‘Notes from a Dying Man’.
In addition to Jurassic ParkNeill acted in Peaky Blinders, Poseidon, The Hunt for Red October y Event Horizon, among other. “I’m not afraid of dying,” she says. “What I don’t want to do is stop living, because I really enjoy living,” she closes.
