The 76-year-old – well known for his roles on the big and small screen – previously wrote about his journey with stage-three blood cancer when he penned his memoir a year ago. Speaking to on Monday, Neill said he wrote the book while going through treatment when he “had nothing else to do”, as he also touched on his dislike of the modern superhero blockbuster and thinking about his mother’s journey from Northern Ireland halfway around the world when she “signed up to marry Dad”. The Peaky Blinders star told the newspaper: “The truth was, I didn’t know how long I had to live.
What I had was aggressive. I thought I’d better scribble down some stuff before I shuffle. "[I was] stuck in Sydney, getting chemo, I had nothing else to do, and the idea of having nothing to do was unbearable.
” Neill’s family moved from Northern Ireland to New Zealand in the 1950s where they settled in Christchurch. He told The Guardian: “I sometimes think about my mother, who never complained about anything in her life. I don’t think, when she signed up to marry Dad, that she imagined she’d be halfway across the world and have to leave her mother and all her friends, and start again.
"But I was seven years old; I didn’t know any different.” Meanwhile, the actor also spoke about the current state of the movie industry, suggesting he doesn’t particularly like the modern blockbuster –although he made cameos in the two most recent Thor films. "Now we’re in the age of .