Sam Neill And Laura Dern Look Back At Their Twenty-Year Age Gap In “Jurassic Park” And Now Think It Was Weird

Back in 1993, Sam Neill and Laura Dern starred in a little movie called Jurassic Park where they played a paleontologist and a palaeobotanist falling in love. The age difference between Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler was 20 years, which is totally normal for Hollywood, and also for Leonardo DiCaprio. Laura and Sam are currently doing the media rounds to promote Jurassic World Dominion, which comes out next month, and they talked about their weird age gap back in the day.

When the first Jurassic Park movie came out, Sam was about to turn 46 and Laura was 26. Sam spoke with the Sunday Times UK about how he never originally thought anything was weird with Laura’s age until it was pointed out to him via a magazine article that grouped him with other old dudes getting with women who could be their daughters, via USA Today:

“I am 20 years older than Laura! Which at the time was a completely appropriate age difference for a leading man and lady,” Neill, 74, told The (London) Sunday Times of the casting with Dern, now 55.

He added: “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. I thought, “Come on. It can’t be true.””

Ford starred in Six Days, Seven Nights in 1998 opposite Anne Heche when he was 55 and she was 29. Connery was 39 years older that Catherine Zeta Jones in the 1999 movie Entrapment.

Dern also discussed being 20 years junior to Neill.

At the time, she said, she thought it was “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 reflected.

Wow, so we’re canceling older-man-younger-woman relationships now? Dudes are not gonna wanna give that one up. Leonardo will be first on the front lines defending dating a woman half your age. Sean Penn will forget all about saving Ukraine and film a different kind of hands-on documentary.

Pic: Universal Pictures