Laura Dern and Sam Neill Address 20-Year Age Gap in ‘Jurassic Park’
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It might’ve been chill back in the day, but the two-decade age gap between Laura Dern and Sam Neill (who play Jurassic Park lovers Alan Grant and Ellie Satler) is . . . questionable. Ahead of the dinosaur film’s new sequel, Jurassic World Dominion, Dern and Neill addressed the difference in age between the onscreen lovers — and how things have changed since.
“I am 20 years older than Laura!” Neill told The Sunday Times. “Which at the time was a completely appropriate age difference for a leading man and lady!”
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The actor said the difference in the couple’s ages “never occurred” to him until he saw an article titled “Old Geezers and Gals” in a magazine about “people like Harrison Ford and Sean Connery acting with much younger people,” he said. “And there I was on the list. I thought ‘Come on. It can’t be true.'”
As for Dern, the two characters falling in love felt OK. “It felt completely appropriate to fall in love with Sam Neill,” she said. “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?’”
The film released its official trailer in February, and the clip features Chris Pratt as Owen Grady herding the park’s gargantuan creatures like a cowboy. Meanwhile, the voice of character John Hammond, Jurassic Park’s founder, narrates some of his famous lines: “I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion, something that was real, something they could see and touch.”
The trailer bills the film, out June 9, as “the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era.”
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