Laura Dern and Sam Neill return to the Jurassic Park fold, reprising their roles as Dr. Ellie Sattler and Dr. Alan Grant for the upcoming blockbuster Jurassic World Domination.
While it’s unclear what their characters’ relationship will look like in the latest film, which hits theaters June 10, the couple’s romance was lightly mentioned in the original. Jurassic Park. This film was released in 1993, the year that Dern, born in 1967, turned 26 and Neill, a baby born in 1947, turned 46.
In a new interview with the Sunday Newsthe stars – now 55 and 74 years old respectively – reflected on the fact that their characters had romantic relationships, even though 20 years had passed between the actors.
“Laura was quite young. I guess… 23?” Neill mused about his younger co-star. “And she was already an exciting actress – she had been in David Lynch films. It was no surprise that she was asked. But I was completely baffled when Steven (Spielberg, the film’s director) called me. I didn’t understand it.”
Although neither of them really realized it at the time and Neill had previously been cast alongside much younger leading actresses – including Nicole Kidman, also 20 years younger than him, who played his wife in “The Last Man” in 1989. Dead silence – they couldn’t resist pointing out the striking age difference.
“I’m 20 years older than Laura!” Neill blurts out during the interview, causing Dern to laugh. “That was a perfectly reasonable age difference for a male and female lead back then! It never occurred to me until I opened a magazine and there was an article called ‘Old Guys and Girls.’ People like Harrison Ford and Sean Connery are acting with much younger people. And there I was on the list. I thought, ‘Come on. This can’t be true.'”
According to Dern, “It felt completely appropriate to fall in love with Sam Neill. And it wasn’t until now, when we returned in a moment of cultural awareness of the patriarchy, that I thought, ‘Wow! We’re not the same age?'”
Jurassic Park marked the beginning of Dern’s real-life romance with her other Jurassic Park Co-star Jeff Goldblum, 69. Goldblum, who also reprised his role in Jurassic World Dominationis 14 years older than Dern, with whom he dated for most of the mid-90s.
