“I will always love you, Dr. Alan Grant”: Steven Spielberg and Laura Dern pay a final tribute to Sam Neill

They shared the Jurassic Park adventure with him for nearly thirty years. The director and the actress gave particularly moving testimonies.

The family of Jurassic Park is in mourning.

The day after the death of Sam Neill, who died at the age of 78, Steven Spielberg and Laura Dern paid tribute to the memory of the man who played the legendary Dr. Alan Grant, one of the most emblematic heroes of the saga.

The director told Variety his deep sadness. “I owe a lot to Roger Donaldson, Gillian Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce, who gave Sam roles in which he was so brilliant that they caught my attention and led me to cast him as Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park“, writes Spielberg in a press release, before evoking the human qualities of his actor:

“Sam was an exceptional collaborator. It was almost a challenge for him to play a man who found children noisy and annoying, as he was the opposite of this character in life. He was a deeply loving father.“

The filmmaker concluded his tribute by recalling the very strong ties that united the actors of the saga:

“I loved making all the films Jurassic with him. With Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always be a Jurassic family. Sam will never be forgotten, neither by us, nor by the millions of spectators who loved him around the world.”

The tribute of Laura Dern, partner of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park Then Jurassic World: The World Afteris just as upsetting. The one who played the paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, Alan’s companion at the start of the saga, greeted a lifelong friend:

“Sam was my lifelong friend. He taught me the meaning of loyalty, protection and love, always with his deliciously dry humor. He was a truly noble man, and the dream partner everyone would wish for on screen.”

The actress ended her message with a sentence that will not fail to move fans of the saga:

“I will always love you, Dr. Alan Grant.”

Of Jurassic Park in 1993 at Jurassic World: The World After in 2022, Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum have spanned nearly thirty years of cinema history together. An adventure which, according to the words of its partners, had long since gone beyond the simple framework of a film shoot.