Sam Neill, who memorably played Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise, is not shaken by his ongoing battle with cancer. In a televised interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Australian Story, the New Zealander revealed that he’s keeping busy and “not really interested” in his cancer diagnosis. He said he’s continuing to stay busy and active. 

“I know I’ve got it, but I’m not really interested in it,” Neill, 76, told Australian Story. “It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get into it.”

Neill revealed this spring that he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare form of blood cancer, in 2022. In March, Neill told The Guardian that to combat the illness, he needed monthly chemotherapy treatments for the rest of his life. About three months into his treatment, according to ABC, the chemo stopped working, and the 76-year-old was put on a new cancer drug that requires biweekly infusions, which have reportedly kept him in remission for 12 months. Neill told Australian Story that the days after treatments are “very grim and depressing,” leaving him feeling like he’s gone through 10 rounds with a boxer. “But it’s keeping me alive,” he added.

Rather than focus on his diagnosis, Neill is keeping busy with plenty of activities, including turning his vineyards organic, making his winery carbon-neutral, and writing a memoir for his grandchildren so that they have “a sense of me.” “It would be great for them to have some of my stories,” he told Australian Story. “I mightn’t be here in a month or two.” 

Despite that grim possibility, Neill said he isn’t “remotely afraid” of the prospect of death, though dying would be “annoying.” He said he’s much more afraid of saying goodbye to his first love—acting. Retiring, Neill said, “fills me with horror.” Fortunately, Neill is still working: He’ll soon be seen in the Peacock series Apples Never Fall, an adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel, opposite Annette Bening. Neill tells Australian Story that the biweekly treatments only give him about 10 good days between treatments, but that those 10 days are enough for him. They are, he says, “10 days in which I could not feel more alive or pleased to be breathing and looking at a blue sky.”