Movies - TV
Spielberg Threw A Wrench In Sam Neill's Plan For His Jurassic Park Performance
By RYAN SCOTT
In “Jurassic Park,” Sam Neill originally intended to portray Alan Grant with an American accent, but the final result ended up somewhere between an American accent and his natural voice. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Neill revealed that he actually wasn’t happy with that aspect of his performance, and it was a result of Steven Spielberg flip-flopping a bit.
Neill explained that he had been working on an accent for four weeks when Spielberg told him to forget the accent and just use his own voice. The actor thanked the director, but four days later, as Neill put it, “He came up to me and said, ‘You know that voice you're using now?’ I said, ‘Yeah, my voice?’ He said, ‘Somewhere in between.’”
Neill says that the halfway accent was an “actor’s nightmare” and joked that people continue to tell him the accent was “a load of T. rex poo.” Regardless, the voice has become an iconic part of the Alan Grant character, and audiences can hear it once again in “Jurassic World: Dominion.”