Sam Neill is glad he has never used dating apps like Tinder.

The 72-year-old actor is in a relationship with 59-year-old Australian political journalist Laura Tingle and he feels relieved that he doesn't have to rely on technology to find love.

The 'Jurassic Park' star believes that apps have taken all the romance out of dating and instead encourage single people to have as much casual sex as possible

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, he said: ''If you're lucky, sex is one strand of a beautifully textured and coloured fabric. A very important part of the fabric, but only part of it. And sex divorced from everything else seems kind of desolate. I know people obviously a lot younger than me are on Tinder and Grindr and things. But it just sounds kind of ... arid.''

Sam admits even in his eighth decade he is now expert on sex and when he was growing up he received no sex education at all which meant many of his early erotic experiences were mostly ''fumbling'' and ''making mistakes''.

He said: ''I don't claim to be an expert (on sex) now. You go on discovering all sorts of things in life.

''I grew up a long, long time ago, so I was told nothing.

''And I was at boarding school, so everything was rumour. Everything was very mysterious. There was no great loss in that, as it was all about fumbling around and making mistakes. So it was really quite fun!''