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Everything to Know About Sam Worthington, Star of John Woo's Peacock Action Film The Killer

Action star Sam Worthington will appear as Finn in John Woo's The Killer, now streaming exclusively on Peacock.

By Cassidy Ward

Over the last couple of decades, Sam Worthington has starred in some of the most successful movies ever made and carved out a niche for himself as an unassuming action star. Up next, he stars in the action thriller The Killer, now streaming exclusively on Peacock.

Directed by John Woo (Face/Off, Paycheck), The Killer is an English-language reimagining of Woo’s own 1989 film of the same name. The original starred Chow Yun-fat as Ah Jon, an assassin on his last job before retirement. Woo’s film stars Nathalie Emmanuel (Fast Saga, Game of Thrones) as Zee, an assassin so feared that she’s earned the nickname “Queen of the Dead.” When Zee refuses to kill an injured young woman in a nightclub, she makes deadly enemies on both sides of the law.

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The film also stars Worthington as Zee's handler, Finn. Head below for a closer look at Worthington's life and career, as well as details on how Finn fits into the world of The Killer.

Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel) holds a bottle and points to Finn (Sam Worthington) in The Killer (2024).

Who is Sam Worthington?

Sam Worthington was born in south-east England in 1976, but the family moved to Perth, Australia, when he was still an infant. He attended John Curtin College of the Arts, a dramatic arts high school located in Fremantle, Western Australia, where he studied acting. He later auditioned and was accepted on a scholarship to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Worthington became a household name across Australia thanks to his performance as Howard on the Australian drama Love My Way.

In the real world, he is married to model and media personality Lara Worthington. She is best known for the Tourism Australia campaign and a reality TV show called Being Lara Bingle, which ran for one season in 2012. The duo has three children, born in 2015, 2016, and 2020.

Director John Woo, Sam Worthington and Nathalie Emmanuel speak on the set of The Killer (2024).

What are Sam Worthington's other movie and TV roles?

Sam Worthington is likely best known for roles in the Avatar franchise, as well as the film Terminator Salvation.

Worthington appeared in Rogue, a 2007 creature feature following a group of tourists in a fight for survival against a giant crocodile. He plays Neil, a heroic if misguided tourist who survives his first encounter with the croc but falls victim to its ravenous maw in the second act.

In 2009, Worthington appeared in Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment in the Terminator franchise. The movie stars Christian Bale as an adult John Connor and the late Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese. Worthington plays Marcus Wright, an experimental human-terminator hybrid trying to find his purpose and place between two worlds.

RELATED: The Killer: Everything to Know About the Cast & Characters of John Woo's Peacock Film

Of course, Worthington is most famous for his role in the most commercially successful (having earned nearly $3 billion at the box office since its release in 2009) film of all time. Set a century in the future, James Cameron’s Avatar sees humanity expanding into interstellar space and encountering a habitable moon orbiting a gas giant in the Alpha centauri system. The moon, dubbed Pandora, is home to the humanoid Na’Vi (a race of tall, blue aliens) and a valuable resource called unobtanium. Worthington plays Jake Sully, a former marine recruited to pilot a genetically constructed human-Na’vi hybrid body known as an “avatar.”

Who is Sam Worthington playing in The Killer?

Sam Worthington plays Finn, the assassin handler who provides Zee with her targets. If Zee is a deadly weapon, then Finn is the person who aims her. Despite that, Finn genuinely cares for Zee.

Finn tells Zee where she’s going and who she needs to kill, but he’s not just a handler, he’s also a friend. In the film's production notes, Worthington describes the character as “a mentor of violence, a conduit of ruthlessness, but he cares deeply for Zee.”

Whether that affection is enough to help Zee survive until the end credits remains to be seen.

How to watch Sam Worthington in The Killer on Peacock

The Killer is now streaming exclusively on Peacock.

The NBCUniversal platform offers two monthly subscription plans: Premium ($7.99 a month with ads) and Premium Plus ($13.99 a month with no ads and download access for certain titles). If you're a student, you can enjoy the Premium plan for just $1.99 for an entire year!

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