“That’s what I looked like for quite a while - it was embarrassing, and I lost my beard and everything, and my dignity went with it.”
Neill was first diagnosed with cancer in 2022, when he returned to New Zealand following the Covid-19 lockdowns. His son Tim earlier told Australian Story about the doctor’s phone call that confirmed his dad’s diagnosis.
“When he hung the phone up and we sat down, and we had a little bit of a cry together,” he said. “It was supposed to be a happy day. He didn’t get to stay.”
Neill then spoke of undergoing a few months of “brutal” chemotherapies, as he was “in really a fight for my life”.
Tim recalled seeing the effect that the treatment had on his father, saying, “I could barely hug him. He was just, you know, bones and skin. And then he was giving me a hard time for being upset about it and saying I was stressing him out, but I was going, ‘What are you talking about, Dad?’”
Despite the treatment, Neill’s cancer did return - at which point he started an experimental drug to treat it, which worked and led to him going into remission for almost two years.
The actor has said that he is “prepared” for the reality that this drug will cease to be effective at some point.
“I know I’ve got it,” he said of his cancer, “but I’m not really interested in it. It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get into it.”
He now gets infusions every fortnight and will continue to do so until they stop working.
