For someone who has never moved to Hollywood, Neill has fared extremely well in the USA, while keeping his options open to work in other countries. He turned in some of his best feature portrayals of the 80s opposite Meryl Streep in two films directed by Fred Schepisi: "A Cry in the Dark/Evil Angels" (1988), as a father whose child is allegedly carried off by a wild dingo in a based-on-fact story; and the less worthy romantic drama, "Plenty" (1985). For the small screen, he enjoyed tremendous success as a real-life James Bond in the 12-part British series "Reilly: Ace of Spades", airing on PBS' "Mystery!" in 1984, and added to his US resume with TV-movies like "Ivanhoe" (CBS, 1982) "The Blood of Others" (HBO, 1984), and "Leap of Faith" (CBS, 1988), as well as miniseries like "Kane and Abel" (CBS, 1985) and "Amerika" (ABC, 1987). Neill's film career took off in earnest following his performance opposite Nicole Kidman in Philip Noyce's taut thriller "Dead Calm" (1989), to which he brought a quietly commanding middle-aged grace as the distraught husband threatened by interloper Billy Zane.

Neill's role as the Russian submarine captain in "The Hunt for Red October" (1990), adapted from the Tom Clancy thriller, upped his profile dramatically, as well as affording him one of his favorite screen lines: "I would have liked to have seen Montana." After acting in Wim Wenders' "Until the End of the World" (1991) and John Carpenter's "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" (1992), he enjoyed arguably his best year in 1993. Two of his features released that year ("The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior" and the "The Piano") allowed him to film in New Zealand for the first time in 14 years. The latter, in which he played the unsympathetic husband of eventual Best Actress Oscar-winner Holly Hunter, earned the Palme d'Or at Cannes, an award Neill accepted for its absent director Jane Campion. He also squared off against Anjelica Huston in the miniseries "Family Pictures" (ABC) and provided a solid center to Steven Spielberg's blockbuster "Jurassic Park,” as a skeptical paleontologist surprised by his encounter with biogenetically-engineered dinosaurs. All the attention helped him get one role which proved he had arrived: a cameo on "The Simpsons" (Fox).

Going against type, Neill played a wild bohemian artist in the Australian-made "Sirens" (1994), and Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" (1995) offered him another chance to play against type as the tormented investigator hired to find a horror writer. That same year, Neill turned in an over-the-top performance as the rogue King Charles II, the benefactor (then bete noir) of Robert Downey Jr., in "Restoration.” He also returned to documentary filmmaking with "Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey By Sam Neill" (1995), commissioned by the British Film Institute as part of its "The Century of Cinema" series. He reunited with Judy Davis in the Australian black comedy "Children of the Revolution" and was the nobleman who marries Sigourney Weaver in Showtime's "Snow White: A Tale of Terror" (both 1997). Neill then delivered a tour de force performance as the title character of "Merlin" (1998), NBC's $30 million special effects miniseries bonanza, for which he earned critical kudos and an Emmy nomination. The actor was also effective in a rock solid turn as Kristin Scott Thomas' understanding husband in "The Horse Whisperer" (1998), directed by Robert Redford.

Neill continued to undertake challenging roles in a wide variety of projects. He was well-cast as the wealthy man who brings home a robot to aid around the house in "Bicentennial Man" (1999) and earned critical praise for a pair of Australian-produced films: "My Mother Frank" (1999), which cast him as a chauvinistic, conservative college professor who runs up against a fifty-something co-ed (Sinead Cusack), and "The Dish" (2000), in which he was the cardigan-wearing, imperturbable scientist in charge of the telescope that was to relay signals of the American moon landing in 1969. In between, the actor offered a fine turn as US President Thomas Jefferson in the CBS miniseries "Sally Hemings: An American Scandal" (2000). Following another real-life portrayal on the small screen (this time, the commander of a US submarine trapped underwater in the 2001 NBC movie "Submerged"), Neill revisited his role as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in "Jurassic Park III" (2001).

Neill next kept busy in a variety of low-profile Aussie and European productions such as playing Victor Komarovsky in the 2002 English miniseries adaptation of "Dr. Zhivago" opposite Hans Matheson and Keira Knightley, and he would frequently resurface in Hollywood productions such as the romantic comedy "Wimbledon" (2004), in which he played up-and-coming tennis ace Kirsten Dunst's ambitious, protective father. In British filmmaker Sally Potter’s romantic drama, “Yes” (2005), Neill played a prominent British politician married to a Belfast-born microbiologist (Joan Allen). With a marriage plagued with quarreling and infidelity, his wife enterers into a passionate love affair with a Lebanese surgeon (Simon Abkarian) incognito in London as a restaurant cook. Vibrant and daring, “Yes” was both a love story and a political commentary on the pain and rage brought on by the conflict between the West and the Middle East. Some critics, however, were turned off by the dialogue spoken in iambic pentameter.

Continuing to act in Australian features, Neill gave a standout performance as the heavy in “Little Fish” (2006), playing a bisexual crime lord putting the screws on a former heroin addict (Cate Blanchett) trying to escape her dark past for a brighter future. Neill went back to the well for “Merlin’s Apprentice” (Hallmark Channel, 2006), reviving his role as the fabled magician who returns to Camelot only to find the mythical community in ruins after the theft of the Holy Grail. He next played the rugged and freethinking Mr. Pettiman on “To the Ends of the Earth” (PBS, 2006), a three-part “Masterpiece Theater” miniseries about the doomed voyage of a refurbished British warship traveling from England to Australia. After playing the husband of a woman (Susan Sarandon) convinced that she’s being stalked in “Irresistable” (2006), Neill played the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, top advisor to King Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), in “The Tudors” (2007- ), Showtime’s lavish 10-part series depicting a conflicted monarch prior to his split from the Catholic Church.