Often in America people would assume that [as an English actor] you’ve had some sort of deep, classical training, or that you’re a Shakespeare enthusiast. I have zero interest in me performing Shakespeare.
BILL NIGHYI 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.
More Bill Nighy Quotes
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I don’t do plays without jokes anymore. I’ve retired from those plays. I think it’s bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke.
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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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I’m crazy about James Brown. I’m crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.
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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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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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The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.
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I’m probably the only person who actually remembers pirate radio.
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As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I’m greedy for beauty.
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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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Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect.
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I’m not an actor who consciously accesses bits of my life, in order to play parts. Obviously, you don’t need to have been a father to play one, otherwise everyone who’s been a father would be able to act.
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Hunger is almost like something the West does. It’s almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.
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If you ever see me in a social setting wearing any sort of sportswear, then you know I’m in crisis.
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I’m always happy when actors get rich, because the odds on it are so long!
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I’m a jacket man. And if I’m without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don’t know how to operate in shirt sleeves.
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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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I find it hard to relax around any man who’s got the second button on his shirt undone.
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Whatever you do, don’t smoke’. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.
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Standing in front of a fake mountain with fake snow falling and seven girls dressed as Santarettes will stay in my memory.
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I used to do nothing but plays. I’ve been very fortunate that on several occasions I’ve had jobs where I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world whatever you had to offer – however much money you’ve got
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I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.
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I generally do things I’m proud to be in and generally I’m in things people like.
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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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I really have no interest in delivering the iambic pentameter, I just want to kill myself. I don’t mind other people doing it. I say that, but really I don’t want to watch other people doing it. I get embarrassed.
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Try to be in the day. Try to not have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow.”
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One of my great regrets, and I don’t have many, is that I spent too long putting people’s status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities.
BILL NIGHY