While Sam Neill declared himself cancer free in April, after a four-year battle with blood cancer, he wasn’t out of the woods when it came to worrying about his health, the Daily Beast and other outlets are reporting.

Before his death Monday, the 78-year-old “Jurassic Park” star had contracted pneumonia, apparently a consequence of the intense chemotherapy the New Zealand actor had undergone to treat his cancer, according to his ex-girlfriend. Neill was diagnosed with Stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in 2022.

“The bottom line is he’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years intensively,” Australian journalist Laura Tingle explained to ABC Radio Sydney, as reported by Cover Media.

“That takes a toll on anybody’s body. He’d had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy,” said Tingle, who dated Neill from 2018 to 2021. “Thankfully, it had finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he had. But that left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system, and I think his poor old body sort of got a bit exhausted.”

“He’s been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks, and everybody who loved him has been willing him on from near and far, but I think it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time,” Tingle also said.

Rima Te Wiata, Neill’s fellow Kiwi actor who co-starred with him in the 2016 film, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” told the New Zealand Herald that Neill had contracted a lung infection in recent months and suffered from pneumonia in his final days.

“It really sucks, actually,” Te Wiata said. “As (Neill) said once in the press … he’s not scared of death but he would be annoyed … he would be like ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I got over my cancer and now look … now I’ve got pneumonia. What next?’ But he’s on his big journey now.”

Neill’s family revealed his “sudden and unexpected death” on Monday on Instagram, while also saying he was cancer free.

Neill disclosed his cancer diagnosis in 2023 while promoting his memoir, “Did I Ever Tell You This?” which he was spurred to write after learning he had cancer and might be dying, as he told The Guardian.

In the opening chapter, there’s a preamble on what it means to live a good life, followed by Neill’s musings about “why he’s even writing a book, about who will read it,” The Guardian reported. And then Neill said, “The thing is, I’m crook. Possibly dying. I may have to speed this up.”

The cancer diagnosis came after Neill was in Los Angeles in March 2022, promoting the sixth “Jurassic Park” movie, “Jurassic World Dominion,” in which he returned to play Dr. Alan Grant. The Emmy-nominated actor noticed he had swollen glands, The Guardian reported. Within weeks he had started chemotherapy for angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. During his treatment, he was isolated in a Sydney apartment and began writing down stories about his life and his family and friendships.

Neill enjoyed a versatile and prolific, five-decade career, amassing more than 150 screen credits. Born in Northern Ireland to an English mother and a New Zealand father, Neill moved to New Zealand as a child and first gained international attention in the 1979 Australian film, “My Brilliant Career,” with Judy Davis. His career continued to pick up in the late 1980s and early 1990s with roles in “Evil Angels,” “Dead Calm,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “The Piano” and then the first “Jurassic Park” movie in 1993. He also regularly appeared on television, include his Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Merlin in the “Merlin” miniseries. He also starred in “Reilly, Ace of Spies,” “The Tudors” and “Peaky Blinders.”

Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Neill gained an online following for his charming social media presence, with many posts focusing on his life on Two Paddocks, his remote New Zealand farm and winery where he enjoyed a loving bond with his pigs, chickens, cows and other animals.

As recently as June, Neill posted a video of himself serenading to his cows, while earlier posts showed him doing yoga with one of his pigs and having a sweet conversation with a duck, telling the duck, “You are a pretty duck. You are! Don’t let anyone else tell you anything different.”

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