TL;DR
Sam Neill’s memoir, written in a burst in 2022 while he was being treated for blood cancer. It’s funny, gossipy and self-deprecating, and it’s how he told the world he was ill.
In 2022 Sam Neill was diagnosed with stage 3 blood cancer. He kept working, and he wrote a memoir in a few months while he went through treatment. He later called the writing a lifesaver.
Did I Ever Tell You This? came out in March 2023, and that was how most people learned he was sick.
What is Did I Ever Tell You This? about?
A life told out of order, the way you’d tell it over a long dinner. Neill was born in Northern Ireland in 1947, moved to New Zealand at seven and went to boarding school in Christchurch. The book opens with family history and Irish roots, and his illness frames it at both ends.
In between are the films: Sleeping Dogs, My Brilliant Career, Dead Calm, The Piano, Jurassic Park, Peaky Blinders. The stories about the people he worked with are the best part. He writes about Judy Davis and William Hurt, about a dinner with Meryl Streep and a former prime minister, and about his long friendship and rivalry with the Australian actor Bryan Brown. One chapter is titled “Bloody Bryan Brown.” Another is “Women Are Better.”
He also writes about Two Paddocks, the pinot noir vineyard in Central Otago where he spent his later years among the animals and the vines.
How was Did I Ever Tell You This? received?
Warmly. One Australian review called it charming, candid and self-deprecating, gossipy but rarely shocking. Meryl Streep and Stephen Fry both praised it. A revised and updated edition with new writing came out in 2024.
What happened to Sam Neill after the memoir?
He beat the cancer. In April 2026 he announced he was cancer-free after a newer treatment called CAR-T therapy. Three months later, in July 2026, pneumonia took him suddenly, at 78. His family said he had passed with dignity, and that the loss was blessed because he had stayed cancer-free.
Why does Did I Ever Tell You This? matter to memoir writers?
It’s proof that a hard diagnosis can be the reason to write and not the reason to stop.
Neill wrote fast, wrote funny and wrote about the people he loved, and he didn’t let the illness take over the book. Most people who sit down to write a memoir under that kind of pressure produce something heavy. He produced a book full of co-stars, directors, farm animals and a running grudge against Bryan Brown. The cancer is there, stated without fuss, and then he goes back to the next story.
He talked about it without self-pity and said he wasn’t afraid of dying. The memoir has the same tone. Anyone putting off a life story until the timing is better should read it.
Keep reading
My tribute to Sam Neill: the actor who could play the Antichrist and a cranky farmer, and never seemed to take himself seriously.
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