Top 64 Quotes & Sayings by Sam Neill

I have taken a bit, when I find the time, to the odd television binge. Because television has improved so much, it's worth binging.

It took me 30 years, but I finally bought myself the Patek Philippe watch I'd always wanted. It's ridiculous how much I love it.

It doesn't matter how popular an actor you are: nobody will remember you forever.

I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work.

I'm not big on Champagne, but I'd take along a bottle of Cristal to pop for when the boat comes to the rescue.

I get very antsy and nervous if I don't know what the next job is.

If you're making films in New Zealand, you can't avoid the landscape. It's certainly more handsome than I am.

I certainly don't want to die playing a round of golf. And I don't want to die like Elvis. That's all they remember about him - the most beautiful man on the planet.

Do you know, I'm not as much of a moviegoer as I should be, and I do end up - because I'm travelling so much - I end up seeing movies on aeroplanes, which is the worst possible way to see a movie!

If you want to learn about America, watch 'The Wire.' It's a profound piece of entertainment.

When I started in films, it never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of acting.

If it looks like fun, and it looks like quality, then I'll do it. I don't feel compelled to work - or not to work.

It makes the day considerably more enjoyable when you're working with people you think are good, and it makes your job easier, too.

If you're making a horror film, it's very important that you have lots of quiet, suspensey, don't-know-what's-happening stuff before you get the big fright.

When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.

I always want to be as good in the part as I possibly can. But I make no pretensions of being the greatest actor in the world.

People turn into fools when they see a movie star and do weird things.

I'm serviceable. I'm durable. I get the job done.

I've worked all my life to shed myself of any character.

As much as possible, I try to encourage people to use stunt men because that is really their job.

I enjoy some physical stuff. But if I had a choice between playing a scene where it's raining, it's terribly cold, I'm wet and I'm being drowned and playing a scene with dinosaur eggs in a laboratory, I'd probably take the latter. It's warmer and generally more comfortable!

I like Taika Waititi a lot. I thought 'Boy' was a really wonderful film, had great resonance. Very sad but also very funny. I thought 'What We Do in the Shadows,' the vampire film, was fantastic.

I was - I was very - I wasn't outgoing at all as a child.

It was just as well I found acting because I had no aptitude for anything else.

I don't think I ever felt an outsider when I had a stutter.

I'm not sure it's affection for Australian or New Zealand films or not. I think it's just that there's something about 'Wilderpeople' that has really struck a chord.

I was christened 'Nigel.' It set me back for years.

I go by the role pretty much. And I think the only genre I haven't gotten to do but I'd love to is a western, but no one has ever asked me to do that. Unfortunately they are very few and far between these days, but that is one type of film I'd love to do.

I can never really remember what I look like. I'm just sort of neutral. I don't think I'm sort of, you know, hideous.

Whilst filming 'Jurassic Park,' I watched a hurricane approaching the beach in Hawaii. My co-worker Laura Dern and I thought we might die, but we managed to laugh about it later.

'Dexter' I'm very fond of. I got addicted to that.

I feel very privileged working with other actors. Actors tend to be the best company I know.

I understand acting and I understand actors. I don't really understand the world of celebrity. That's just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I'm at sea with.

I don't have a chateau in France. There's no private airplane or yacht.

I met the most extraordinary people all over the Pacific, but especially the people in Vanuatu who, in a material sense, are the poorest people I've ever come across. They own nothing, but in a well-being sense, they are easily the wealthiest people that I've come across.

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.

I'm conscious that there's only a limited amount that I'll get done before I get shuffled into retirement, but I certainly have no desire to retire.

No intelligent man wears a moustache voluntarily - you can write that down.

We always have to remind ourselves of how fragile life on this planet is and what responsibilities we have.

I think I'm pretty benign, really, mostly.

Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.

I think so much of your energy when you're growing up is about becoming independent of your parents. And the older you get, the more you realise you're actually so much part and parcel of the same kind of material.

Nobody knows who Barry Crump is, anywhere, but in New Zealand he's huge. I am of that age, where I sort of grew up with Barry Crump books. Look, if you read the book, you realize it is actually not a funny book at all.

Actors are easy to like. They are generally sociable, thoughtful people.

You don't necessarily have to go a long way in New Zealand to be in some pretty dense and scary bush.

I like actors. I like their insecurities, their humor and their intelligence.

Big budgets don't necessarily give you big films.

This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.

If you want to learn about America, watch The Wire. Its a profound piece of entertainment.

You never really know who you're going to be acting with, but that doesn't really matter. 99% of the actors I've worked with, and they number in the thousands, I've liked.

I like being around actors. Imagine not liking actors.

Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.

I never met Barry Crump, but I was in an audience once for a play once. There was a drunken man at the back of the auditorium that was shouting during a performance of a one man play, and it turned out later on that was Barry Crump and he was in a state of inebriation.

[Hunt for the Wilderpeople] people seem to be just finding it hilarious in Sundance. I would think that judging on the feedback I get; it's a very warming film. It's not sentimental, but people are sort of heart warmed by a message that's pretty rare.

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate.

Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.

The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner.