Sam Neill had worked steadily in film for almost two decades before becoming, at the age of 45, a star in the eyes of the industry. A rugged, dependable everyman who radiated, depending on the role, a kind of quietly masculine decency or steely coldness, the New Zealander never pursued flashy, explosive lead roles. In fact, during the early years of her career, she did much of her best work as a pillar of selfless support for several female tour de force turns: Judy Davis in “My Brilliant Career,” Isabelle Adjani in “Possession,” Nicole Kidman in “Dead Calm,” and Meryl Streep in “Plenty” and “A Cry in the Dark.” His performances in all of those films were intelligent, carefully recorded and modulated to focus all attention on his co-star; If he was not already a household name, that same humility had him in great demand.

However, when a pair of career-defining roles in 1993 launched him onto the A-list, it wasn’t through a notable change of direction. As paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” he finally appeared for the first time in a Hollywood mega-blockbuster, playing a sort of macho hero with his own action figure, but Neill knew as well as anyone that he was still playing the second banana to a horde of dazzlingly rendered dinosaurs. Since those creature effects were always the film’s main draw, Spielberg and Universal didn’t need a ready-made star for what producer Kathleen Kennedy admitted at the time “is not an intensely complicated role.” Neill was professional and approachable and unfocused; he was perfect.

Still, “Jurassic Park” was the kind of cultural colossus that threatened to make him a Hollywood leading man despite himself, even if, in a Los Angeles Times interview at the time, he dismissed the idea, saying Spielberg’s film could have given him “a little more influence,” but he continued to have “this penchant for small movies (my agents complain about it from time to time) because I like to play a lot of different things.”

One of those small films was “The Piano,” by his compatriot Jane Campion, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes just as “Jurassic Park” hit theaters. In it, Neill was no hero. As the cuckolded and violently abusive husband of Holly Hunter’s mute mail-order bride in Campion’s colonial-era erotic fable, he was the rigid, prudish counterpoint to the liberated, sensual masculinity embodied in Harvey Keitel’s film. It was an unflattering and potentially thankless role that Neill played with a petty, almost touchingly impotent rage, and a fascinating performance to be hanging around while, on the other side of the world, Neill was being trained as a Hollywood action man.

Once again, it was a lucky charm for his female co-star: Hunter won the Oscar for his brilliantly haunted and intuitive performance, and although “The Piano” received eight nominations in total, there were none for him. Not that it bothered him. Years later, she wrote that she considered Campion’s “important feminist film” to be “a medal on my chest”: “It is a film that will always have a place in the history of cinema. And I served in it.”

It’s a statement that sums up Neill’s approach to his career. He would never again lead a hit of the magnitude of “Jurassic Park,” but that film and its sequels allowed him to accept more profitable and unmemorable roles than he would otherwise have been offered. And these, in turn, gave him the freedom to pursue intimate, unusual projects with talented collaborators (from John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness” to Sally Potter’s “Yes,” Warwick Thornton’s “Sweet Country” to Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”) in which his own performance was less important than the artistic ensemble. In later years, unlikely social media fame (for posts showcasing his wry sense of humor and easy-going love of nature) would seal his reputation as one of the industry’s good guys. However, as a screen presence, he was more interesting and unpredictable than that.