Jurassic Park stars Laura Dern and Sam Neill only made realisation about age gap years later
Topics: News, Entertainment, TV And Film, Jurassic World
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Murray Close/Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
Topics: News, Entertainment, TV And Film, Jurassic World
Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park was the OG thriller dinosaur flick, however, the age gap between Laura Dern and Sam Neill is something even the actors still cringe about.
The duo starred opposite one another as palaeobotanist Dr Ellie Sattler and palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant, and soon, sparks flew.
But one thing you may not have realised was that Neill was old enough to be Dern’s dad.
Dern has since come out to share that she ‘only now’ realises how problematic their age gap was in the film.
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Speaking to The Telegraph before the release of Jurassic Park World Dominion in June 2022, they got candid about their 20-year age-gap.
Neill shared information about filming with Dern when she was just 23: “I am 20 years older than Laura! Which at the time was a completely appropriate age difference for a leading man and lady!
“It never occurred to me until I opened a magazine and there was an article called ‘Old geezers and gals’. People like Harrison Ford and Sean Connery acting with much younger people, and there I was, on the list.”
Dern added that at the time, it was normal.
She explained: “Well, it felt completely appropriate to fall in love with Sam Neill. And it was only now, when we returned in a moment of cultural awareness about the patriarchy, that I was, like, ‘Wow! We’re not the same age?’”
Dern and Neill starred alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in the third and final reboot installation and so did the one and only Jeff Goldblum.
The trio reunited one last time to help the other characters with their dino issue, and a character poster of Dern, Neill, Goldblum, Pratt and Dallas Howard released before the movie united the two generations.
Pratt once shared that the film could be the franchise’s Avengers: Endgame when speaking to Comicbook.
When the actor was asked whether or not World Dominion would be the end of Jurassic Park forever, he said: “You’d want to leave it open to that possibility. There aren’t a ton of comps for this kind of a thing.
“I think maybe Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame is a similar comp because you’ve got whatever that was…10 years, 20-something films.
“All of these characters each had their own stories, their own trilogies coming together. And you’re like, 'this is wild'.”