“Jurassic Park” stars Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum had the experience of a lifetime when they met the late Princess Diana during a screening of their 1993 adventure film.
The two actors are also returning to the dinosaur franchise in the upcoming sequel “Jurassic World: Dominion” and Neill, 74, recently chatted with GQ about meeting the princess of Wales, whom he sat next to during the film premiere in England.
“When we went to London, I was sitting beside Princess Diana, and she was jumping out of her skin. That was fun,” the New Zealander said.
“I’d seen [the movie] three or four times by then,” the “Tudors” star went on. “So it was really half an eye on the screen, and half an eye on her, looking at how she was reacting, and sometimes she would have her hands in front of her eyes. I mean, she really loved it.”
He also noted that Lady Di was very interested in talking to his then-10-year-old son, Tim. “They had a long chat. And they agreed on everything,” he recalled.
Goldblum, 69, also remembered a very intimate moment he shared with the royal. “The Big Chill” star spoke with Entertainment Tonight at the red carpet premiere of “Jurassic World: Dominion” about his time with Diana, who tragically died in a car crash in August 1997 while in Paris when she was just 36 years old, during the 1993 premiere.
“We showed it to Princess Diana and we had a kind of a royal screening,” Goldblum said. “[Director] Steven Spielberg was here, Sam Neill was here, Princess Diana was here, you know, and we showed them the movie.”
He and mother of two munched on a bucket of popcorn together while viewing the action flick. “That’s all I can say,” the “Independence Day” alum quipped. “No, I was very much a gentleman and she was a spectacular lady.”
Diana would later take her two sons Prince William and Prince Harry to see “Jurassic Park.” But an incident went down with the paparazzi when Diana and her kids left the cinema.
The photographer took snapshots of the young royals with their mother and Diana allegedly approached him and said, “You make my life hell.”
