WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Sam Neill, the smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose prolific career moved from art films to blockbusters as he dodged velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” and played Holly Hunter’s cruel husband in “The Piano,” has died. He was 78.

In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.

His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding that he “remained cancer free” when he died. A cause of death wasn’t specified. “Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterized his whole life,” his family wrote.

Tributes were paid by fellow actors and directors, including Steven Spielberg, who helmed the first “Jurassic Park” movie.

“I adored making all the ‘Jurassic’ movies with him. Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world,” Spielberg said in a statement.

Actor Sharon Lawrence wrote on Instagram: “Condolences and appreciation for the immense joy and mastery Sam Neill brought our industry.”

Neill was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, along with Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy “Sweet Revenge” to chopping off Hunter’s finger in “The Piano” to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror “Event Horizon.”

He portrayed both saintly and sinner: In “Omen III: The Final Conflict,” he played Damien the Antichrist, and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in “The Tudors.”

The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film “My Brilliant Career,” which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm,” a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.

Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s “Plenty” and — again for Schepisi — in “A Cry in the Dark,” a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback.

He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 miniseries “Merlin” and another as narrator of 2017’s “Wild New Zealand.” Neill also earned three Golden Globe nods — for “Merlin,” “One Against the Wind” and “Reilly: Ace of Spies.”

Richard E. Grant, a longtime friend who co-starred with Neill in 2019’s “Palm Beach,” described him in a post on Instagram as “an officer and a gentleman in the truest sense.” Grant said Neill had “guided and helped me through a very difficult time in my life.”

Perhaps Neill achieved his highest level of fame in “Jurassic Park,” playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs.

His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”

Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and “Jurassic World: Dominion” in 2022.

“It’s probably a little late to learn these things,” he told the New York Daily News in 2001, “but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero. I’m happier with Grant this time. He’s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”

Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He was born Nigel Neill, but told interviewers he started to go by Sam because there were too many Nigels at his school.

His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in “Sleeping Dogs” in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.

On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: an American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024, he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”