The 20-year age gap between Laura Dern and Sam Neill in “Jurassic Park” in the 1993 blockbuster never raised eyebrows until recently.
The couple, who are gearing up to reprise their roles as paleobotanist Ellie Sattler and paleontologist Alan Grant in ‘Jurassic World Dominion,’ reflected on Steven Spielberg’s decision to cast them opposite each other as love interests in the original film.
Dern was 23 at the time and Neill was in his early 40s.
“I’m 20 years older than Laura! Which, at the time, was a very appropriate age difference for a leading man and woman,” Neill told The Sunday Times (from London) about the cast.
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He added: “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 who play with much younger people. And there I was, on the list. I was like, ‘Come on, that can’t be true.'”
Ford starred in “Six Days, Seven Nights” in 1998 opposite Anne Heche when he was 55 and she was 29. Connery was 39 years older than Catherine Zeta Jones in the 1999 film “Entrapment.”
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Dern also spoke about being 20 years younger than Neill. “Our age gap in ‘Jurassic Park’ was completely inappropriate,” she said, looking at it through Today’s lens.
At the time, she says, she thought it was “quite appropriate to fall in love with Sam Neill”.
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“And it wasn’t until now, when we came back in a moment of cultural awareness about patriarchy, that I was, like, ‘Wow! We’re not the same age?’ Dern mused.
“Jurassic World Dominion” is released on June 9.
