There are many times when some aspects of older movies are cast in a different light years after their release, and for Laura Dern, the age gap between her and co-star Sam Neill is one of them. In the original Jurassic Park, the characters of Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant have some kind of relationship together, but their off-screen actors had a 20-year age gap that never really came across in the movie. Only now has the realization of such a big difference in the actors’ ages dawned on stars who played those roles, with Laura Dern admitting that it seemed more inappropriate now by what is expected in today’s society.
In 1993, Laura Dern was 26 years old, while Sam Neill had just turned 46. While there have been many celebrity couples with similar age gaps, ahead of the pair’s return to the Jurassic franchise, Dern told The Sunday Times that she didn’t notice it was as inappropriate as it now seems for the two stars to be so far apart in age in those roles, with the male star being vastly older than his female counterpart. She added:
“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?”
Sam Neill found the age difference was not something unusual for the time Jurassic Park was made, and in fact, only really discovered how it was perceived following a chance encounter with a magazine article called “Old Geezers and Gals” in which the pair featured. He said:
“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. I thought, ‘Come on. It can’t be true.’”
Jurassic World: Dominion Brings Back Jurassic Park’s Age-Gap Couple With No Issues
The perspective of age gaps has been something that has often been brought up in Hollywood, whether relating to pairings on screen, or real-life couples off-screen. As Jurassic World: Dominion brings back three of its main stars, there is little doubt that anyone would have an issue with the 20-year age gap between Dern and Neill this time around. Almost three decades on from the release of Jurassic Park, Laura Dern is now 55 years old, with Sam Neill about to turn 74, and at those ages, no one seems to care about age difference anymore.
Over the years, Hollywood couples such as Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, George and Amal Clooney, Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and others have all received comments about their around-two-decade age difference. While there are some who question age gaps between couples, whether in real life or in fiction, there can always be the argument that age is, in the end, just a number.