A chat about wine, milk and celebrity with actor Sam Neil.
The drive from Queenstown to Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks vineyard takes you through some of the country’s most spectacular landscapes and back at least a half a century.
I arrive at the Redbank property almost 20 minutes late, thanks to road delays at the Nevis Bluff.
There is a 1947 Chevrolet truck parked in the shingle drive. The gold tinge of the leaves betray what could otherwise be mistaken for a full summer day. Vines stretch out towards the valley while lavender bushes and fruit trees rise up the gentle slope to the damn.
Two Paddocks manager Mark Field greets me and leads me into the office. Sam is bent over a desk and turns to greet me quickly. “I’m terribly busy,” he says, “We get up at dawn and go to bed exhausted.”
When he turns back, I see that he is writing a postcard.
His humour is as dry as the sun-scorched Central Otago hills. And so is my throat after a dusty drive through them. Sam pours me a glass of water while I pull up a chair. He speaks slowly and thoughtfully and rarely makes eye contact.
We get the formalities out of the way first. It is New Zealand, so we search out our one-degree-of-separation. It doesn’t take long.
“You’ve come from Lyttelton?” he asks. “Yes,” I answer. “I know your sister and your niece.”
More formalities ensue. He’s pleased with the hot weather. It’s good for the vines, which are still catching up after a cool, wet summer.
Sam has been in the news this morning, the New Zealand Herald reporting his opposition to cubicle dairying in the Mackenzie Country. He’s been asked to go on Saturday Morning with Kim Hill but he’s hesitant.
“I’m not good at thinking on my feet and I don’t like radio because you can’t take anything back,” he says.
Yet this issue is worth speaking up for.
“You’ve got to put your hand up once in a while,” he says. “I don’t do it often but this proposal is infuriating. It’s dry land and it should be dry farmed if at all.”
The large-scale dairying proposal includes three companies proposing to house almost 18,000 dairy cows in cubicle sheds. The hearing had just begun and Sam had put his voice to a group called the Mackenzie Guardians, which includes former poet laureate Brian Turner and artist Grahame Sydney.
The group estimates that the proposal would create as much waste as Christchurch city.
“The equivalent of waste from a city of 400,000 people going into that fragile ecosystem every day - to my mind, that’s vandalism. Corporate vandalism.”
In its report, The Herald has referred to him as “Hollywood Star Sam Neil”, but I imagine that reference would make him wince.
I ask if he sees himself as a celebrity. “Dear God, no. Why would anyone want to be that? I’m a reasonably successful non-entity. I’ve certainly never chased fame. I’ve never had a publicist.”
The celebrity culture is baffling to Neill. “When I go to the dentist, I look through the magazines and I don’t know who any of those people are. Some of them look quite nice in a frock but I’ve got no idea who they are.”
I suggest that New Zealand is a bit insulated from the celebrity culture but Neill disagrees. “It’s rife in New Zealand. Auckland is full of celebrities.”
But not Alexandra.
“Every now and then someone might toot the horn and say ‘Hi Sam’. I usually know them.”
After a very busy 2009, Sam is enjoying some time off to enjoy life as a Central Otago local.
“I do quite a bit of fishing,” he says. “We take a few bottles of wine, for testing purposes only. We need to find out if it drinks well at high elevations and after being carried around in your backpack all day. We also need to see if it measures up to the grandeur of the surroundings.”
It would be most unacceptable to drink average quality grog amongst the spectacular landscapes of Central Otago.
An appreciation of alcohol run’s in Neil’s blood. “I come from generations of fine boozers,” he says.
The family business, Neill & Co, was a wine and spirit merchant. Sam’s father, Dermot Neill, was also a military man. Sam was born Nigel Neill in 1947 while his father was stationed in Northern Ireland.
In 1954, the family returned to New Zealand and Dermot moved into the family business. There were several Nigel’s at school, so Nigel became nicknamed “Sam” and it stuck.
So, was it a return to his boozing roots that motivated Neill to start a vineyard? No, he says, it was almost an accident.
“I bought some land, planted some vines. I never had a plan, just like the rest of my life. It’s bigger than I intended.”
I get the feeling his film career is also bigger than he intended. Certainly bigger than he expected.
“I never had any ambitions for anything,” he says.
Neill started acting at high school in Christchurch but he never had any formal education. “I always thought acting would be a cool thing to do but when I left school there was so little work. There were only half a dozen people who could make a living from acting. When I did some plays at the Downstage Theatre in my last year at uni, I was paid $30 a week and we did six performances a week. $30 plus a free dinner and it was always the same – it was always mash potatoes and beef stew.”
Neill moved to Wellington and got a job at the National Film Unit. He worked as an editor, a writer, a narrator and eventually the director of documentaries.
His big acting break came in 1977, when he starred in Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs. The first New Zealand film to be released in America, Sleeping Dogs caught the attention of Australian casting director Margaret Fink, who got Neill an audition for a film called My Brilliant Career. When he landed the part, Neill resigned from the Film Unit and took up acting full time, going on to star in many, many films, including Jurassic Park, The Horse Whisperer and The Piano.
Not at a bad career for someone with no ambition. He is characteristically modest: “I’m still here. I think I’m durable and reasonably useful. I’m not a specialist. I’ve also had a great deal of luck. I’ve been the right places at the right time.”
Though he’s been enjoying some much-deserved time off, Neill is in no sense slowing down. “I never want to hang up my boots. I can’t imagine anything worse.”
The pay has improved dramatically since his days at Downstage but Neill says he also loves the camaraderie of working on a film and the experience of travelling to new locations.
“I love the family feel you get from a being with a bunch of people for three to six months. And occasionally, I get to work with directors who are really fantastic and do work that I’m really proud of.”
I ask what he is most proud of but he is diplomatic. “I can’t single anything out because then there are people who get upset because they haven’t been singled out.”
Neill has always been a great supporter of the New Zealand film industry, most recently starring in Jonathan King’s Under the Mountain, but he says he won’t take on a role, just because it’s a New Zealand film. He has to believe in the film as well.
When he’s not working, Neill splits his time between his homes in Sydney and Queenstown. But his heart is clearly here. “You’re either a hill person or a beach person and I’m a hill person but we’re lucky in New Zealand that we’ve got both in great numbers and you’re never far from one or the other.”
He takes me for a tour of Redbank. Fire, his ageing and nearly-deaf Staffi, ambles along with us. The property was formerly a research station for Crop & Food. Along with the grapes, Redbank grows lavender, saffron, Echinacea, apricots, cherries, apples, pears and truffles. The lavender and saffron are commercially harvested and sold under the Two Paddocks label.
Sam shows me the lavender still and I sniff a few bottles of the extracted oil. He takes me to meet Hamish, the naughty Boer goat who has been known to jump fences and eat the vines. We visit the newly hatched, free-range chooks up by the Neil Dawson floating feather sculpture and feed the pigs some rotting pears.
It’s an idyllic life and it suits him – strolling around in shorts, a collared shirt and sun-hat. But vineyard life is only a part-time distraction and Sam will be back on the road again when the next project presents.
“There is always stuff in the pipeline,” he says. “There are a few things I’d like to do that still haven’t got funding and there are a few things that have got funding that I’m not sure if I’d like to do.”
In the mean time, there is jam to make and the harvest around the corner followed by, no doubt, more rigorous product testing.
(c) Kris Herbert. Originally published in b-guided magazine 2010.
I arrive at the Redbank property almost 20 minutes late, thanks to road delays at the Nevis Bluff.
There is a 1947 Chevrolet truck parked in the shingle drive. The gold tinge of the leaves betray what could otherwise be mistaken for a full summer day. Vines stretch out towards the valley while lavender bushes and fruit trees rise up the gentle slope to the damn.
Two Paddocks manager Mark Field greets me and leads me into the office. Sam is bent over a desk and turns to greet me quickly. “I’m terribly busy,” he says, “We get up at dawn and go to bed exhausted.”
When he turns back, I see that he is writing a postcard.
His humour is as dry as the sun-scorched Central Otago hills. And so is my throat after a dusty drive through them. Sam pours me a glass of water while I pull up a chair. He speaks slowly and thoughtfully and rarely makes eye contact.
We get the formalities out of the way first. It is New Zealand, so we search out our one-degree-of-separation. It doesn’t take long.
“You’ve come from Lyttelton?” he asks. “Yes,” I answer. “I know your sister and your niece.”
More formalities ensue. He’s pleased with the hot weather. It’s good for the vines, which are still catching up after a cool, wet summer.
Sam has been in the news this morning, the New Zealand Herald reporting his opposition to cubicle dairying in the Mackenzie Country. He’s been asked to go on Saturday Morning with Kim Hill but he’s hesitant.
“I’m not good at thinking on my feet and I don’t like radio because you can’t take anything back,” he says.
Yet this issue is worth speaking up for.
“You’ve got to put your hand up once in a while,” he says. “I don’t do it often but this proposal is infuriating. It’s dry land and it should be dry farmed if at all.”
The large-scale dairying proposal includes three companies proposing to house almost 18,000 dairy cows in cubicle sheds. The hearing had just begun and Sam had put his voice to a group called the Mackenzie Guardians, which includes former poet laureate Brian Turner and artist Grahame Sydney.
The group estimates that the proposal would create as much waste as Christchurch city.
“The equivalent of waste from a city of 400,000 people going into that fragile ecosystem every day - to my mind, that’s vandalism. Corporate vandalism.”
In its report, The Herald has referred to him as “Hollywood Star Sam Neil”, but I imagine that reference would make him wince.
I ask if he sees himself as a celebrity. “Dear God, no. Why would anyone want to be that? I’m a reasonably successful non-entity. I’ve certainly never chased fame. I’ve never had a publicist.”
The celebrity culture is baffling to Neill. “When I go to the dentist, I look through the magazines and I don’t know who any of those people are. Some of them look quite nice in a frock but I’ve got no idea who they are.”
I suggest that New Zealand is a bit insulated from the celebrity culture but Neill disagrees. “It’s rife in New Zealand. Auckland is full of celebrities.”
But not Alexandra.
“Every now and then someone might toot the horn and say ‘Hi Sam’. I usually know them.”
After a very busy 2009, Sam is enjoying some time off to enjoy life as a Central Otago local.
“I do quite a bit of fishing,” he says. “We take a few bottles of wine, for testing purposes only. We need to find out if it drinks well at high elevations and after being carried around in your backpack all day. We also need to see if it measures up to the grandeur of the surroundings.”
It would be most unacceptable to drink average quality grog amongst the spectacular landscapes of Central Otago.
An appreciation of alcohol run’s in Neil’s blood. “I come from generations of fine boozers,” he says.
The family business, Neill & Co, was a wine and spirit merchant. Sam’s father, Dermot Neill, was also a military man. Sam was born Nigel Neill in 1947 while his father was stationed in Northern Ireland.
In 1954, the family returned to New Zealand and Dermot moved into the family business. There were several Nigel’s at school, so Nigel became nicknamed “Sam” and it stuck.
So, was it a return to his boozing roots that motivated Neill to start a vineyard? No, he says, it was almost an accident.
“I bought some land, planted some vines. I never had a plan, just like the rest of my life. It’s bigger than I intended.”
I get the feeling his film career is also bigger than he intended. Certainly bigger than he expected.
“I never had any ambitions for anything,” he says.
Neill started acting at high school in Christchurch but he never had any formal education. “I always thought acting would be a cool thing to do but when I left school there was so little work. There were only half a dozen people who could make a living from acting. When I did some plays at the Downstage Theatre in my last year at uni, I was paid $30 a week and we did six performances a week. $30 plus a free dinner and it was always the same – it was always mash potatoes and beef stew.”
Neill moved to Wellington and got a job at the National Film Unit. He worked as an editor, a writer, a narrator and eventually the director of documentaries.
His big acting break came in 1977, when he starred in Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs. The first New Zealand film to be released in America, Sleeping Dogs caught the attention of Australian casting director Margaret Fink, who got Neill an audition for a film called My Brilliant Career. When he landed the part, Neill resigned from the Film Unit and took up acting full time, going on to star in many, many films, including Jurassic Park, The Horse Whisperer and The Piano.
Not at a bad career for someone with no ambition. He is characteristically modest: “I’m still here. I think I’m durable and reasonably useful. I’m not a specialist. I’ve also had a great deal of luck. I’ve been the right places at the right time.”
Though he’s been enjoying some much-deserved time off, Neill is in no sense slowing down. “I never want to hang up my boots. I can’t imagine anything worse.”
The pay has improved dramatically since his days at Downstage but Neill says he also loves the camaraderie of working on a film and the experience of travelling to new locations.
“I love the family feel you get from a being with a bunch of people for three to six months. And occasionally, I get to work with directors who are really fantastic and do work that I’m really proud of.”
I ask what he is most proud of but he is diplomatic. “I can’t single anything out because then there are people who get upset because they haven’t been singled out.”
Neill has always been a great supporter of the New Zealand film industry, most recently starring in Jonathan King’s Under the Mountain, but he says he won’t take on a role, just because it’s a New Zealand film. He has to believe in the film as well.
When he’s not working, Neill splits his time between his homes in Sydney and Queenstown. But his heart is clearly here. “You’re either a hill person or a beach person and I’m a hill person but we’re lucky in New Zealand that we’ve got both in great numbers and you’re never far from one or the other.”
He takes me for a tour of Redbank. Fire, his ageing and nearly-deaf Staffi, ambles along with us. The property was formerly a research station for Crop & Food. Along with the grapes, Redbank grows lavender, saffron, Echinacea, apricots, cherries, apples, pears and truffles. The lavender and saffron are commercially harvested and sold under the Two Paddocks label.
Sam shows me the lavender still and I sniff a few bottles of the extracted oil. He takes me to meet Hamish, the naughty Boer goat who has been known to jump fences and eat the vines. We visit the newly hatched, free-range chooks up by the Neil Dawson floating feather sculpture and feed the pigs some rotting pears.
It’s an idyllic life and it suits him – strolling around in shorts, a collared shirt and sun-hat. But vineyard life is only a part-time distraction and Sam will be back on the road again when the next project presents.
“There is always stuff in the pipeline,” he says. “There are a few things I’d like to do that still haven’t got funding and there are a few things that have got funding that I’m not sure if I’d like to do.”
In the mean time, there is jam to make and the harvest around the corner followed by, no doubt, more rigorous product testing.
(c) Kris Herbert. Originally published in b-guided magazine 2010.
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