Despite his international success, he maintained close ties to New Zealand, spending most of his time in Central Otago, where from 1993 he began making wine under the label Two Paddocks. His wines were generally well regarded by critics, but he attempted to take a democratic approach to pricing, telling The Guardian: “I’d hate to think my wine was only being drunk by property developers.”

“I take great pride in the wine that we make,” he told The Australian Financial Review in 2018, adding: “People are taking the wine seriously, as they should, and that has taken a while. People tend to underestimate actors. They say, ‘He is an actor, what would he know?’”

In recent years, Mr. Neill also became known for an idiosyncratic social media presence, mostly focused around his winery near Clyde, New Zealand, and its animal inhabitants, which were often named after thespians. Over the years they included a pig named Anjelica Huston, a cow named Helena Bonham Carter and a resplendent cockerel named Michael Fassbender.

Mr. Neill is survived by his siblings — Michael, an academic, and Juliet, a drama teacher — and his children, including a son from his 11-year relationship with the actress Lisa Harrow and two daughters from his marriage to the makeup artist Noriko Watanabe, from whom he separated in 2017.

Mr. Neill would become one of his nation’s most famous citizens. But he wrote in his memoir that he had never quite shaken the terrified child who had made the long journey from Northern Ireland.

“My exterior is undoubtedly Sam the New Zealander,” he wrote. “You might even recognize him. But inside, somewhere very deep, there lives a small shy boy who sounds very different, and his name is not Sam. It is Nigel.”

Laura Chung contributed reporting from Sydney, Australia.