“What is the best lesson you learned from your parents?” the young girl asked famed actor Sam Neill during a publicity event. Visibly moved, the Jurassic Park star needs a moment: “I’m, uh, yeah, um… I don’t know why that question’s moved me so much, but it has.”
Then, with tears in his eyes, he answers: “My parents were of the generation that went through a lot of things. They went through the Depression. My mother lost her father in the First [World] War, so she grew up without a father. They went through a lot of stuff, but they were very stoic people.”
With a “gosh, in hindsight this is so embarrassing” kind of laugh, he continues: “And I’d had a year at university… I was acting in plays and trying to find a girlfriend, and it came to exam time. I realized I had done almost no work. It got me very anxious. Anyway, I got home. Mom said, ‘How are you, darling?’ And I said, ‘Oh Mom, I think I’m having a breakdown. And I’ve got exams in a couple of weeks, and I don’t know how I’m gonna gonna…'”
And then, with the stern but infinitely kind love only a caring parent can deliver, Sam Neill’s mom taught him everything he needed to know about life with a single sentence:
“She just looked at me, and she said, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to pull yourself together, aren’t ya?’
Sam Neill’s mother died in 1999. But even 25 years after her departure, he still has to pull himself together. As an aging actor. In shooting a sequel to a franchise he last featured in 30 years ago. And through his cancer diagnosis and so-far-so-good treatments.
Somehow, my gut tells me her legacy won’t be lost any time soon. Not just because of her son’s accomplishments, but because of the story he chose to tell to that young girl on a seemingly random day at a seemingly random event. A story Sam concluded with the same look his mother gave him all those years ago—and with the same idea, passed on to a new generation:
“That was the best lesson I learned from her: Sometimes, you just have to pull yourself together.”