{"id":5185,"date":"2007-09-14T09:47:24","date_gmt":"2007-09-14T14:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smaggi.us-east-1.derr.space\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2010-06-04T21:32:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T02:32:29","slug":"happy-60th-birthday-sam-neill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/2007\/09\/14\/happy-60th-birthday-sam-neill\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 60th Birthday Sam Neill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Before Anna Paquin, Lucy Lawless and Russell Crowe, this gentleman was probably the most famous actor from New Zealand for two decades. Admittedly, playing Damien in\u00a0<em>Omen III: The Final Conflict<\/em> wasn&#8217;t a terrific start but he hit my personal radar with the British miniseries\u00a0<em>Reilly: Ace of Spies<\/em> on PBS. I was originally intrigued by the show when I heard that Reilly was a real person and a major inspiration for Ian Fleming&#8217;s James Bond character. As the years went by, you&#8217;d see Sam appearing in bit parts through the Eighties (including the horrendous Reagan propaganda piece\u00a0<em>Amerika<\/em>)\u00a0until he made it big in\u00a0<em>The Hunt for Red October<\/em> as Sean Connery&#8217;s second in command. Then he probably became more of a household name through\u00a0<em>Jurassic Park<\/em>. My favorite of his is\u00a0<em>The Piano<\/em> which is also a showcase of his home country. Oddly, he didn&#8217;t appear in any of\u00a0<em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em> flicks. In honor of his birthday though, I am going to try to hunt down a recent Aussie movie he appeared in called\u00a0<em>Dirty Deeds<\/em>. It also stars John Goodman (yeah, the dude from\u00a0<em>Roseanne<\/em>), Bryan Brown and Toni Collette. Set in Sydney around the Sixties, the American-based mafia is reaching out to invest elsewhere so the Aussie criminals can either join them or step aside. Neill plays a dirty cop who turns a blind eye to Brown&#8217;s activities. It was on Dish a couple years ago yet I never saw how it ended as I caught it in the middle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before Anna Paquin, Lucy Lawless and Russell Crowe, this gentleman was probably the most famous actor from New Zealand for two decades. Admittedly, playing Damien in\u00a0Omen III: The Final Conflict wasn&#8217;t a terrific start but he hit my personal radar &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/2007\/09\/14\/happy-60th-birthday-sam-neill\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diversions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5187,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions\/5187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}