‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill

Fellow actors, directors and admirers have all paid tribute to Sam Neill, pictured here during the Peaky Blinders festival in Birmingham in 2019. Neill died on Monday aged 78, his family said. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

Sam Neill’s friends, peers and admirers have rushed to pay tribute to the actor after his sudden death on Monday at the age of 78.

Steven Spielberg, who directed Neill in Jurassic Park, said he was “saddened” by the news. “Sam was exceptionally collaborative,” he said. “It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children.”