I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone’s name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff.
BILL NIGHYWhen you are in something that you’re proud of and it’s funny and it’s a good night out and all of those things, there’s nothing quite like it. The rewards are proportionate to the amount of alarm and distress it causes you.
More Bill Nighy Quotes
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To be serious, the things you really want to relive are things like bedtime with your daughter when she becomes incredibly entertaining ’cause she doesn’t want to go to sleep.
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In the street, people talk to you about all kinds of things, but by far, the most number of people talk to me about Love, Actually.
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Anti-Semitism and Fascism have a long, mysterious, bewildering, poisonous and vile history and it’s not exclusive to the Germans.
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I don’t dislike the process of animation… I find it daunting, but only as much as I find everything daunting.
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If I ruled the world, every woman would have a Chanel suit in her wardrobe.
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I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.
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If I’m going to appear in front of people I like to look my best.
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I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.
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You can ruin your life wanting to be an actor.
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I love imaginative representations of a possible near-future, where you look at the technology and you think, “Well, yeah, that could really nearly be true.” I like those kinds of backgrounds.
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I would like to change everything, but obviously not everything. I’ve been incredibly fortunate. I guess everybody would do this, but I’d go back to my younger self and say, “Lighten up. Take it easy. Relax. Don’t be so anxious about everything.
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I hardly even leave my own house.
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In one way, an attempt to reproduce the way people actually speak, but it’s not just an attempt at naturalism. It’s stylised and it’s heightened, to great effect. It’s elegant and it’s funny and that’s the way to my heart, frankly.
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So there are things like projection and filling the room, and not dropping the ends of lines – technical things which are important, but I don’t think they change the way I feel in a scene.
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I don’t even own a car.
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A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It’s a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.
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I quoted David Hare one of his lines the other day to illuminate whatever point we were trying to make in the conversation, and I said ‘What play was that?’ and he said ‘It was your line, you said it about a hundred and fifty times in The Vertical Hour.’
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It’s more than usually possible that I won’t do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language.
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I have no memory, any at all, of actually performing the play, no recall in terms of the lines. I can’t tell you any line from any play I’ve ever done.
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I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn’t operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it’s actually also true – if I want to appear in public I want to look my best.
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The job is the same – to attempt to make it sound like you’ve never said it before and as if it’s just occurred to you. And that’s the same whether you’re on camera or whether you’re on stage in a room full of people.
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Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth.
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When a movie is called ‘searingly honest,’ it’s almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get.
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All actors who have been around for a long time, which I have, and have been skint for long periods, which I have, find it difficult to turn down jobs. If I turn anything down my stomach turns over. I feel sick. It feels like gambling.
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I’m not good at watching myself which I think is perfectly natural. I don’t give myself a hard time about it. I am the worst critic.
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I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they’d arrest you for crimes against acting.
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