On June 11, 1993, Steven Spielberg premiered Jurassic Park in theaters in the United States, another of those King Midas classics that pleasantly surprised critics and audiences with a science fiction story where dinosaurs returned to Earth 65 million years ago. years after becoming extinct thanks to genetic cloning.
Based on the homonymous novel published in 1990 by Michael Crichton, the film was a box office success, populating the big screen with impressive special effects. Jurassic Park brought thousands of children closer to science and paleontology and became the highest-grossing film until the arrival of Titanic (1997), garnering three Oscars: best sound, sound effects and visual effects.
The franchise was exploited over six more tapes. The latest installment, Jurassic World: Dominion brings back the main characters of the original film almost three decades later, this time under the baton of Colin Trevorow. We review what has become of Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum during this time.
Daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, Laura Dern played Dr. Ellie Sattler, an expert in paleobotany, a role that was initially offered to both Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright, who ended up declining the proposal. The actress had made her film debut with a small role in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, by Martin Scorsese, and she rose to popularity at the hands of David Lynch in Wild at Heart (1990).
Dern thoroughly prepared his character as Sattler, meeting with experts and visiting the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles to learn about the fossilization process and gain the context required by the film's plot. Since then, his face has been a regular in a lot of movies and TV movies, especially in supporting roles such as Dr. T and the Women, I Am Sam, Lonely Hearts, The Master or Django Unchained. Lynch's muse, she collaborated with the director on Inland Empire, More Things That Happened or Twin Peaks: The Return.
She has participated in The Founder, A Big Life, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, in the skin of Amilyn Holdo, Vice Admiral of the Resistance and friend of General Leia Organa and triumphed with Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley in the acclaimed series Big little lies as the controlling executive Renata Klein. She was nominated for an Emmy for The Tale and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her lawyer in Noah Bauchman's Marriage Stories.
His new projects include The Son, a follow-up to the Alzheimer's drama The Father, directed by Florian Zeller, with Anthony Hopkins and Hugh Jackman as co-stars. And with the Australian Justin Kurzel he will star alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the dystopian Morning.
At 55 years old, the actress happily resumes her role as Ellie Sattler and has recalled with emotion the reunion with Neill and Goldblum: "The first day, the three of us got back together. We got into the Jeep, we looked to one side, which was where the crew was gathered just before we started filming, and they had tears in their eyes."
The British-New Zealand actor was always Spielberg's first choice to play Dr. Alan Grant, a paleontologist who ended up making good friends with the grandchildren of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the billionaire manager of InGen, the company behind the park. Jurassic.
He had previously stood out in titles such as A Cry in the Dark, with Meryl Streep; Total calm, next to a very young Nicole Kidman, or The Hunt for Red October, with Sean Connery. The success of Jurassic Park gave her more fame, but she never achieved star status. He brought back Dr. Grant in the third installment directed by Joe Johnston, which was a complete flop.
In 1993 he appeared in the acclaimed The Piano with Holly Hunter and since then he has not stopped working in both film and television productions in fifty years of career. On the small screen he has taken part in In Cold Blood, Merlin, Doctor Zhivago, The Tudors, Alcatraz or Peaky Blinders and in the cinema we have seen him in Final Horizon, The Bicentennial Man, as Odin in Thor Ragnarok, The Passenger, at the orders by the Catalan Jaume Collet-Serra, and next July he returns to the role of Odin in Thor: Love and thunder, by Taika Waititi.
This 2022 is full of premieres: the Spanish co-production thriller Assassin club, by Camille Delamarre; the fantastic The Portable Door, with Christoph Walz and the miniseries The Twelve. Neill has also developed a successful career as a wine entrepreneur. He owns two wineries in Central Otago, New Zealand, and sells his products online.
In October 2019, he was at the Sitges festival, which awarded him the Grand Honorary Award for his contribution to the fantastic and horror genre with films such as Possession (1981). In an interview granted to this newspaper he already expressed his joy at getting back into Dr. Grant's skin. "For the project to be possible it was necessary that the three of us were together in it," he said.
The tall actor (1.94 m) played Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and professor of Chaos Theory with the appearance of a rock star who warned of the risk of cloning dinosaurs and the danger of the existence of a park Jurassic. He was also first on Spielberg's shortlist for the role, as they both shared an interest in dinosaurs.
Active in the profession since 1974, Jeff Goldblum gained great popularity with David Cronenberg's disturbing The Fly (1986), and has never stopped working. His career has been built non-stop, with blockbusters such as Independence Day or The Lost World, the second installment of the Jurassic saga. Fernando Trueba trusted him to star in The Crazy Monkey's Dream (1989), and his presence has always been synonymous with quality throughout the different titles in which he has taken part, most as secondary.
Among his most recent works we have seen him as the villainous Grandmaster in the superhero films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and Thor Ragnarok, where he coincided with Sam Neill. He voiced one of the dogs from Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, with whom he collaborated on The Grand Budapest Hotel and J.A. Bayona brought him back for the Jurassic franchise in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
In 2019 he starred in his own documentary series, The World According to Jeff Goldblum and this year he has a small role in Asteroid City, the film that Wes Anderson shot in Chinchón in the summer of 2021. He will also be in the comedy The Liar, directed by Tony Hagger, alongside Charles Dance and Rupert Everett. In Jurassic World: Dominion, she recaptures Malcolm's calm spirit, which he imbues with a great sense of humor. For the actor, the reunion with Dern and Neill has been "like a high school reunion."
