Hollywood Mourns Sam Neill, Chase, and Garrett

ISLAMABAD (GNP): The entertainment world is mourning the loss of three performers this week, with the deaths of veteran actor Sam Neill, former child star Daveigh Chase, and “How to Eat Fried Worms” actor Blake Garrett confirmed in separate reports over recent days. The three deaths, spanning a decades-long career and two shorter ones cut short by addiction, have drawn renewed attention to both the highs of long Hollywood careers and the struggles that can follow child stardom.

Sam Neill, Jurassic Park Star, Dies At 78

New Zealand actor Sam Neill died on Monday, July 13, in Sydney, Australia, at age 78. His family said in a statement shared on social media that his death was sudden and unexpected, though he remained free of the rare blood cancer he had been diagnosed with in 2022 at the time he died. The family thanked staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for his care and asked for privacy as they process the loss.

Neill was best known for playing paleontologist Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, a role he reprised in Jurassic Park III and 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion. His decades-long filmography also included The Hunt for Red October, The Piano, A Cry in the Dark, and Dead Calm, along with television roles in The Tudors, Alcatraz, and Peaky Blinders, where he played Chief Inspector Chester Campbell opposite Cillian Murphy.

His breakout came in 1977 with the New Zealand film Sleeping Dogs, credited as the first local production to draw international attention, and he continued working in New Zealand cinema throughout his career, including Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016.

Born Nigel Neill in Northern Ireland in 1947, he moved to New Zealand at age seven and adopted the name Sam as a child. He was knighted in 2022, becoming a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, having earlier been made a Distinguished Companion in 2007. Outside acting, Neill ran the Two Paddocks vineyard, which he founded in 1993, and served as a trustee of New Zealand’s National Parks and Conservation Foundation. He is survived by his children.

Daveigh Chase, Voice Of Lilo, Dies At 35

Daveigh Chase, who voiced Lilo in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch and starred as Samara Morgan in the 2002 horror film The Ring, died on June 16, 2026, at age 35. Los Angeles County medical examiner records list her official cause of death as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, with chronic polysubstance use noted as another significant condition, and classify the manner of death as natural. That finding differs from the account her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, gave when he announced her death on June 17, saying at the time that she had died of complications from meningitis and a related blood infection.

Chase began acting at age 7 and moved into television at 8, appearing on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, The Practice and ER. In 2001 she played Samantha Darko in Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko and voiced Chihiro Ogino in the English-language dub of Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, before her breakout as Lilo the following year, a role she reprised across the franchise’s sequels and its 2003-2006 television series. She later recurred on HBO’s Big Love from 2006 to 2011, reprised her Donnie Darko role in 2009’s S. Darko, and largely stepped back from acting after 2016’s Jack Goes Home.

Blake Garrett, Child Actor, Dies At 33

Blake Garrett, who played the character Plug in the 2006 film How to Eat Fried Worms, died on February 8, 2026, at age 33. The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled his death accidental, attributing it to acute fentanyl toxicity.

Garrett had been living at a sober living facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the time of his death. His mother, Carol Garrett, said he had been sober for three years but had been diagnosed with shingles just a week before he died and had been managing significant pain from the condition.

How to Eat Fried Worms, based on the 1973 novel by Thomas Rockwell, was Garrett’s only film role; the cast also included Tom Cavanagh, Clint Howard, Andrea Martin, James Rebhorn, and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, and the young ensemble won a Young Artist Award in 2007. Before the film, Garrett had toured internationally in Barney’s Colorful World, Live! and appeared in the stage productions Peanuts: A Charlie Brown Tribute and Aladdin and His Magical Lamp.

A Week Of Contrasts

Neill’s death closes out a screen career that spanned nearly five decades, a knighthood, and a second act as a vintner, with tributes centering on longevity and public affection built over generations of films. Chase’s and Garrett’s deaths, by contrast, both followed years of reported personal struggle after early fame as children, and both involved medical examiners’ findings tied to substance use, underscoring a pattern that has recurred often enough in Hollywood reporting to warrant continued scrutiny of support systems available to former child performers once the cameras stop rolling.