BY MICHAEL DEVLIN

OMAGH-born actor, Sam Neill is set to star in the second series of the successful US television series, The Tudors.

Produced by American entertainment giant, Showtime and filmed by Ireland's largest film studio, Ardmore Studios, The Tudors will see Neill act opposite another rising Irish star, Jonathan Rhys Meyers (King Henry VIII) as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and is based around the early life and times of the English monarch. As yet it is unclear when (or if) the show will hit our own TV screens.

It is understood Showtime held talks with a number of studios across Europe but finally decided to award the ¤29 million contract to Ardmore, based in Bray, Co Wicklow. Owned by U2's manager Paul McGuinness and the band's former accountant Ossie Kilkenny, this is a major boost for the Irish studio which has struggled in recent times to attract big budget productions. The company has previously worked on major films such as King Arthur and Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto but has not worked on a Hollywood picture in a number of years.

Sam Neill DCNZM, OBE (real name Nigel John Dermot Neill), was born on September 1947 in Omagh, the second son of Dermot, a Harrow and Sandhurst-educated army officer and third generation New Zealander (who was then stationed in Omagh), and his English wife, Priscilla.

Neill returned with his family to New Zealand in 1954 (where he currently resides between films) and is the owner of the Two Paddocks winery in Central Otago. He is most widely known for playing palaeontologist Doctor Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. He has one son, Tim (born in 1983), by New Zealand actress Lisa Harrow, and one daughter, Elena (born in 1990), by makeup artist Noriko Watanabe, whom he married in 1989.