Actor Sam Neill “Possibly Dying” from Stage-three Blood Cancer

‘Jurassic Park' actor Sam Neill, 75, announced that he is being treated for stage-three blood cancer in a candid memoir to be released on Tuesday.

In an interview with the Guardian about his book, Did I Ever Tell You This? Neill discusses his career in film and television, the nature of celebrity, and more.

“The thing is I’m a crook. Possibly dying,” he writes in chapter one, “I may have to speed this up.”

The actor used writing as a way to keep busy while undergoing treatment last year.

“I found myself with nothing to do,” Neill said in the interview. “And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying the human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘what am I going to do?’

“I never had any intention to write a book. But as I went on and kept writing, I realized it was actually sort of giving me a reason to live and I would go to bed thinking, ‘I’ll write about that tomorrow … that will entertain me.’ And so it was a lifesaver really, because I couldn’t have gone through that with nothing to do, you know.”

He underlined that his book is not a cancer memoir, noting that his illness forms a “spiral thread” throughout the narrative.