Actor SamNeil, who became known worldwide for the role of paleontologist Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, revealed this week that he is being treated for stage 3 blood cancer.
It was during a series of interviews that she recounted the first chapter of her memoir, titled “Have I ever contacted him?“, which goes on sale in the UK next week.
“The thing is, I’m a thief. Perhaps by dying”, begins the first chapter of the book. “Maybe I need to hurry,” he continues.
Neill started writing some notes about his life to keep busy and, as a relief, during treatment in the last year.
“I found myself with nothing to do,” Neill said in the interview. “And I’m used to working. I love to work. I love going to work. I love to be around people every day and enjoy human company, friendship and everything in between. 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 continued to write, I realized that I was really giving myself a reason to live, and I went to bed thinking, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to write about it…it will entertain me.” a real lifesaverBecause I couldn’t have gone through it without having anything to do,” he said.
Neill he first noticed a set of protruding glands on his neck last year during a publicity tour for the film Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth installment in the dinosaur series.
When doctors told him what was wrong, he said his reaction was “pretty phlegmatic” but it made him “take stock”. “I thought I had to do something and I thought: ‘Should I start writing?’“, accounts.
“I didn’t think I had a book inside me, I just thought I was writing stories. And I found it more and more fascinating.” “A year later, I not only wrote the book, but it came out in record time”he told the BBC.
She said her book is not a cancer memoir, but that her 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 body’s extensive network of vessels and glands.
Neill received chemotherapy, but when it started failing, he took on a new type of drug which you will continue to receive monthly for the rest of your life.
“I can’t pretend last year didn’t have its dark moments,” he said. But those dark moments made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends. I’m just glad to be alive,” she added.
One of the things she misses the most is her hair. She says she lost it after her first round of chemotherapy and writes in her memoirs that when she looks in the mirror, “there’s a bald, wizened old man there.” “More than anything, I want my beard back. I don’t like the way my face looks at all.”
Indeed, at one point he thinks that the subtitle of the book could have been “Notes from a Dying Man”.
In addition to Jurassic Park, Neill has starred in Peaky Blinders, Poseidon, The Hunt for Red October, and Event Horizon, among others. “I’m not afraid to die,” he says. “What I don’t want to do is stop living, because I really like living,” he concludes.
Source: Clarin
