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Bill Nighy loves a good suit. Everyone knows that. Which is why it’s no surprise to see him this afternoon dressed down sharply in a navy ensemble that’s too stark to be unusual. This is also why the actor’s funny style, which has already been the subject of many interviews over the past two decades, is low on the agenda of today’s discussion – and why then in our limited time, I can’t watch when Nighy, as he walks me to the door, he picks up the tape recorder, holds it to his mouth like a microphone, and explains his penchant for formal wear in that signature deep drawl: “Because I hate my body.” It’s not something you expect to hear from the famously charming 72-year-old, who in love with Actually tore off his leather trousers to reveal what Billy Connolly once praised as his ‘rock ‘n’ roll legs’. The same man who played the crazy sea demon in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and the fluffy time-traveling dad of the year in About Time. But he has spoken about being uncomfortable in his own skin in the past, once revealing that he showers in the dark. And coming from Nighy now, in person – who is standing by to pull me a seat when I arrive (as well as a wonderful dresser, Nighy is known as a gentleman) – the confession is more believable. Because while yes, Nye carries himself gracefully, there’s also a cute, youthful awkwardness about him. His best roles often play into this uncomfortable dynamic, as in his latest film Living. The film – a 1952 remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru – was written by Kazuo Ishiguro with Nighy in mind. He plays Mr. Williams, a downtrodden bureaucrat who binds his every emotion with bureaucracy. When he is diagnosed with stomach cancer and given six months to live, he tries to do just that: live for once in his life. The film has received stellar reviews so far and almost all single out Nighy as a highlight. For the first time, he’s on the receiving end of the Oscars chatter. There’s a moment in Living where Nighy talks to himself in the mirror. He practices telling his son and daughter-in-law about his impending death. His voice trembles like a candle in a room of rocks. “It’s a bit boring, really,” he begins. For most of Living , Nighy plays Mr Williams as shy and sensitive, a maelstrom of emotion buttoned into a starchy collar, but in this moment, vulnerability peeks through. So real is the emotion on his face, it’s hard to believe that Nighy doesn’t imagine himself in the same situation breaking the news to his own daughter, Mary. Nye assures me it is not. “You don’t have to feel it all,” she explains. “Acting is work – and that doesn’t diminish it in any way.” Nighy is thankfully unassuming about his profession. Summoning inner demons and invoking childhood traumas for a two-hour movie? Pssh. “If you’re in the company of someone who suggests that an actor should feel everything he portrays, then you’re talking to someone who’s basically an amateur,” he says fervently. “It’s often a way of punishing actors. I think drama teachers sometimes do this to control students. Just stand there and say, “You’re not feeling it.” How do you know I don’t feel it? What should I feel? You don’t have to be grieving to act grieving – otherwise, well, how would we go about it? You know, acting is acting.” As for method actors, they don’t bother him. “It’s fine as long as there’s no pressure on anyone else to do it the same way. And that it’s not armed as a matter of status, apparently. And that it was done on time. In other words, not on a movie set or in a theater rehearsal room.” He mumbles an apology for drifting into the subject. it’s something like his pet. It’s like that. Despite the actor’s reputation as a curmudgeon and all-around bland—a quality he once described as “edgy disco charm”—Nighy can get energetic on the right subject, no matter how unexpected. Like ice cream. “There is no limit to how much I can eat.” He loves strawberry, but he is not a fan of chocolate, even though he loves real chocolate. “Oh!” she exclaims when I say I feel the same way. “I thought I was weird.” He doesn’t mind peanut or hazelnut. “Honeycomb!” he suddenly remembers. “There’s a restaurant I went to where they made honeycomb ice cream and that was pretty unbeatable.” Nighy has what you might call a sweet tooth. Sugar, he thinks. “I’m an animal when it comes to sugar. I used to eat a four-pack of Magnums and a four-pack of Soleros in one sitting.” He raises his eyebrows in front of the frame of his glasses. “This is my relationship with sugar.” About 15 years ago, she gave up sugar and carbs completely after noticing she had put on some weight. (He’s also been sober since 1992 after struggling with substance abuse.) “I cut out cigarettes and gave up sugar. I’ve never been overweight and when I put some on, it was absolutely…” he opens his eyes in disbelief. “I didn’t think of anything else. I was like, “What burning hell is this?” It wasn’t much, but no one believed me because I have a skinny face and they’re like, ‘Well, you’re OK.’” It all feeds into his love of costumes. “It’s basic insecurity. You’ll think, “At least I can look good in a suit.” Bill Nighy as the tough tycoon Mr Williams in “Living” (Sundance) Nighy grew up the youngest of three in a flat above his father’s garage in south London. his mother was a psychiatric nurse. He went to an all-boys Roman Catholic school where his drama teacher (“A really nice guy called Father Richards. We called him Little Richards”) encouraged him to try acting. “I was tall so I didn’t have to play girls and I had a reasonable memory so I had long parts.” It was at the behest of a friend (“the first girl who ever paid attention to me”) that she applied to drama school. “I think he wrote the letter… I was the first person in our family to ever be a college student. Not everyone went to university in those days, it was basically just the middle class.” On a charming note, Nye recently met Father Richards for lunch after the priest wrote him a letter, which was delivered along with a photo of young Bill in a school play. Sign up As long as you can deliver a line in one sitting, you could probably find some kind of employment. Despite training at a drama school, the idea of being an actor seemed unthinkable. In the mid-70s, Nighy was selling women’s clothes from a stall in Surrey Street Market in Croydon when he was invited to audition for the Everyman Theater Company in Liverpool. “It was a cheesy summer,” Nye recalls, rising from his seat and rocking an invisible hem around his ankles. shoulders hunched, swinging his knees together. “We had these long wrap skirts. I wore one to sell them and the man at the egg stall across the street thought I was absolutely disgusting.’ When the opportunity arose to audition for Pryce, Nighy gave up his position to star opposite Pete Postlethwaite and Julie Walters. And lucky he did, because from there “things got kind of serious”. Or at least, he smiles, “I was making some money and I didn’t have to go to a regular job, which was kind of the idea.” As for the other R word, he doesn’t care. “I have never heard good news about the pension and I have no plans to retire. I’m in a job that you can happily do as long as you can stand,” he smiles. “And well, you don’t actually have to stand up. As long as you can deliver a series of sitters, you could probably find some kind of employment.’ Bill Nighy stars in Richard Curtis’ 2003 romantic film Love Actually (Rex Features) After about a decade treading the boards, Nighy made it to the screen and, in 2003, landed the role of Billy Mack in Love Actually. On paper, the part of a debauched pop star might pale in comparison to the bountiful trolley of romantic leads (Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman), but in Nye’s hands, Billy was his sex symbol – and a role worthy of kicking off a brilliant second act of Nighy’s still-continuing career. The place changed his career – and his life. When Nighy recently joked that his tombstone would read: “Don’t buy drugs kids – become a pop star and they give them to you for free,” there was some truth to it. Funny epitaphs aside, Nighy doesn’t think much of the quote-unquote legacy. “Occasionally, I’ll think, I’ve left all these things lying around.” Sometimes, Nighy laughs, he’ll envision his films being shown during the cemetery. “I used to imagine them coming in at three o’clock in the morning and people saying ‘Who is this guy?’ What’s his name? He was in that other thing.” He doesn’t resent it, by the way. It’s just an observation – or rather an afterthought. “Because I won’t be there anyway. I find it hard to think extensively about a world I don’t exist in. What is this;” “Living” hits theaters on November 4
