Sam Neill’s long-term agent clarifies beloved actor’s cause of death

Sam Neill’s agent of 19 years, Philip Grenz, has confirmed the actor died of pneumonia.

The Jurassic Park star died in Sydney on Monday aged 78. Grenz confirmed Neill was cancer-free in a media statement released Thursday after he said there’d been several “inaccuracies and outright falsehoods” in reports regarding Neill’s death.

“As Sam Neill’s longtime rep, I spoke with his family and wish to clarify some details for his fans,” Grenz’s statement said.

“Sam passed away from pneumonia. Prior to becoming sick, Sam had valiantly fought and beaten lymphoma through a new treatment called CAR-T therapy.”

Grenz confirmed Neill was in remission from stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma at the time of his passing.

“As Sam was an intensely private man who loathed a fuss, his family will honour him with a private family memorial at his farm in New Zealand at a still-undetermined later date,” Grenz’s statement continued.

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“I’d like to thank those who were truly close to Sam for considering his privacy with the respect he earned and his loved ones need and deserve during this immeasurably difficult time.”

His statement comes after comments from journalist Laura Tingle, who was in a relationship with Neill from 2018 to 2021, during a radio interview.

Tingle said Neill was “pretty sick” in his final weeks. She added that his immune system was “compromised” following his years-long cancer battle, from which he was in remission.

“He’s been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks, and everybody who loved him has been willing him on from near and far,” Tingle also told ABC Radio Sydney.

“But I think it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time.

“He’d had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy and, thankfully, it finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he had, but that left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system.”