‘Why did we break up? We’ve never discussed it’: Sam Neill’s ex Heather Mitchell grills him about split

Nearly four decades after they first met, screen icon Sam Neill sits down with his ex-girlfriend Heather Mitchell, to talk about why they split – and why they ‘never discussed it’ until now.

Heather Mitchell: I thought we might start by putting into context why I am interviewing you. So as a starting point, do you remember the first time we met?

Sam Neill: Well, I saw your photograph up on our mutual agent Bill Shanahan’s wall.

HM: Oh, hello. You’ve never told me that.

SN: There were some good sorts up there [on the wall]. It was all black and white so

I couldn’t tell that you had red hair, but you were an absolute knockout and I thought: I wonder who that is.

HM: I have a very strong memory of meeting you for the first time [in 1985] because I knew who you were. I was on my way to Bill’s office, I met you at the lights and you spoke to me and said: “Hi. I’m Sam, shall we walk together?” I was really nervous. And then you said to me, “Do you know you have Hollywood hair?”

SN: [laughs] What a smooth bugger I was.

HM: Well, I was beside myself that you thought I had Hollywood hair, especially as I looked very unkempt. Anyway, we ended up seeing each other for a little while.

SN: Would you say we were boyfriend and girlfriend?

Sam Neill has addressed his split from Love Me star Heather Mitchell in a revealing interview conducted by Mitchell for Stellar. Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

HM: In my book, yes.

SN: Here’s a more important question: why did we break up?

HM: Well, I’ve got my version, and you have yours.

SN: But we’ve never discussed it.

HM: No, we haven’t but I’ve always wanted to. I think I did something that upset you. I can’t remember what it was.

SN: Well, I remember it differently. We were both invited to a party and you were upset with me for some reason. So I turn up thrilled to see you – and you wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t even look at me.

HM: [laughs] I thought you were mad with me! We might still be together if we had talked about this earlier.

SN: Eventually I thought, well, she’s completely lost interest. I got so fed up, I went home, packed a bag, went to the airport and flew to England.

HM: After you left the party, I went to your place to sort it out and they told me you’d gone to England. This was before we had mobile phones, and I didn’t have a contact for you in London. Then weeks later, a parcel arrives. I open it and it’s the most beautiful Joe Furlonger painting. There’s no note. It just says “From Sam”. It’s this beautiful image of a man walking out of frame and a woman who’s upside down looking a little bit crazy. It’s still hanging on my wall, and I showed it to you recently and you said, “No, no, no, you’ve got that upside down. It’s not a man walking away from a crazy woman.” And you turn it up the other way. And it’s a happy woman with a dejected man walking away. That painting is a representation of what happened all those years ago. So Sam, I do apologise right now for any distress and rejection you felt because I was very much in love with you.

SN: It’s OK, because here we are. We’ve been such good friends ever since and you ended up marrying the right man [cinematographer Martin McGrath, who Mitchell has been married to since 1992].

‘We’ve been good friends ever since.’ Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

HM: Yes, I did. Anyway, darling, we are here to talk about you. I just had the great privilege of watching you play Brett Colby in season two of The Twelve. What struck me is how you were able to find the humour in someone who, on the page, could be quite pompous.

SN: Well, I find most people inherently funny. Human behaviour is ridiculous a lot of the time. I think you should think about that, even when playing the worst people. No-one is straight-up bad or straight-up good. Everyone has failings and absurdities.

HM: As you know, I’m doing [a national tour of the stage show] RBG [Of Many, One], which is about a lawyer [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] who had great aspirations for what the law could do within the American system for equality. You’ve done many projects that dealt with the law, but has The Twelve changed your perspectives?

SN: You’re assuming that I’m a thinker. And while I’d like to think that I’m wiser and more savvy about the law than I was before, that would be a fib. I don’t think Colby is someone who would ever become a judge or has anything to contribute to jurisprudence at all. But he loves working within the parameters of that and on high-profile crime. That’s his bread and butter, his meat and potatoes and his meringue for dessert as well.

HM: Is that what made you decide to return for the second series of The Twelve?

SN: Well, I did enjoy making the first series, which was kind of odd because I got my health news halfway through filming it. But there’s something about Colby that I find very comfortable. I think that’s because, apart from anything else, I’ve now known a few Colbys. He’s very much based on a few New Zealand barristers. They’re always fun. They’re always terrible windbags. And they’re a bit naughty. So when the prospect of the second series came up – and it was clear that we were going to see more of Colby’s life this time and it wasn’t just going to be confined to court – I thought: that’s interesting.

Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

HM: You mentioned your diagnosis with angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma while filming The Twelve in 2022. That became a very unique period because we had two other friends who had also just been diagnosed with cancer and another who was also later diagnosed – and then I got a recurrence. [Mitchell was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004.] We were all very close during that time, and we formed this cancer club and had T-shirts … I was in Perth when you were doing your treatments and filming. You’d feel so crap that you couldn’t sleep but the next day you’d be back on set. I never heard you complain. I’ve never heard you say “this is hard” or being self-pitying. I wondered if you could reflect on this journey.

SN: We’ve been through this stuff together and with the club, which isn’t quite as big as it was because we did lose two of our members. Having watched you go through all this before, I think you’re the bravest person I know. You’re always sunny and optimistic. You’re a great example to someone like me because you remind me it’s great to be alive. And you are so alive.

HM: Is there some insight you could offer others going through this about how you maintained your positivity?

SN: Being with other people is great. There have been times when I’ve been very much on my own and feeling solitary and I don’t enjoy that. And the great thing about doing something like The Twelve is you walk around and there are 50 people on set and all of them are up for

a chat. Cancer teaches you to remember that you’re living with it rather than dying from it. That’s quite a different idea. So I live with it. And it’s not killing me. It will kill me one day, but we’ve all got to die.

HM: You’ve done so many brilliant films, from uniquely Australian stories like [1990 comedy/thriller] Death In Brunswick to blockbusters like [1993’s] Jurassic Park. I know you hate the term “celebrity”, but I’ve been with you in a tiny town on the outskirts of Perth and people stop you in the street. Does that exhaust you?

SN: You and I both have friends who are terribly famous. For them, it must be an immense burden. It’s not for me because I’m not that famous. I get recognised a bit, I suppose. But sometimes it’s when I’m with people that they notice a lot more than me.

‘I’m not that famous!’ Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

Heather Mitchell interviewed her ex-boyfriend and now close friend Sam Neill for the latest issue of Stellar. Picture: John Feder for News Corp Australia

HM: It’s also an Australian thing. We tend to let people have their privacy a little more.

SN: I’ve also just been on my farm [in New Zealand’s Central Otago] and, three days after he got his Oscar [for Oppenheimer], Cillian Murphy came to stay. One morning I said: “Let’s do a coffee run.” He was a bit hesitant, but I said, “Look, I can guarantee no-one is going to trouble you here.” So we walk into my [local] coffee place, and it was pretty full because it was 10am. And no-one said a thing. No-one wanted an autograph. I saw one or two people saying, “That’s the guy that’s got the Oscar.” But we were untroubled. It would have been a different story in Ireland. He was the most famous Irishman in the world that week.

HM: This year marks 35 years since you did Dead Calm with Nicole Kidman. What are your recollections of making that film?

SN: There was a bit of an age disparity between us. I must have been about 40 and she would’ve been about 21. Certainly these days, someone would be saying, “I feel uncomfortable with that.” But we were comfortable from day one. I thought she was fantastic. I still do. And it was clear she was not only extremely talented, she had the ambition to be a real movie star. And that’s what happened. It was great fun to do. But I also met my wife-to-be [make-up artist Noriko Watanabe] there, so I was rather preoccupied by pursuing

a woman who seemed extremely reluctant to show any interest in me at all [laughs].

‘Personally, one of my favourite things is working with women and for women.’ Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

HM: I know that Laura Dern has said that while there was also an age gap when you were doing Jurassic Park, she never felt it was inappropriate. And age gaps aren’t necessarily ever inappropriate because a lot of people have relationships at all different ages. But this does lead me to think about that feeling of inequality that I’ve personally experienced on film sets in the past that were very male dominated. What has been your experience?

SN: I think the inequality you describe has immensely improved. People are more respectful than they ever were. Protocols are now very closely observed on film sets. I went to hear Jane Campion speak the other night and she took questions from the audience. One question was: “What was it like to be a young female director in a male-dominated industry?” And Jane, being cheeky of course, said, “It was fabulous!” But then she also said she was grateful to Gillian Armstrong for making [the 1979 Australian period drama] My Brilliant Career because it gave her the confidence that it was possible for women to direct films, be taken seriously and produce wonderful stuff. Having done [1993 film] The Piano with Jane and My Brilliant Career with Gillian, that really resonated. I’ve worked with a lot of women over the years – not just actor to actor, but also being directed by women. So it feels normal. It always surprises me when people say otherwise. Cate Blanchett made a stirring speech at Cannes the other day about how few women have climbed those [red-carpet] stairs as a director. And it is baffling that Cannes is so dominated by men. I don’t get it. Personally, one of my favourite things is working with women and for women.

The Twelve streams on Binge from July 11, and is available on Hubbl.

Read the full interview with Sam Neill and see the shoot inside Stellar, out today. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘Why did we break up? We’ve never discussed it’: Sam Neill’s ex Heather Mitchell grills him about split