I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.
BILL NIGHYIf I’m onstage I like to do contemporary work, largely because of the trousers, because of the clothes. I like a decent, what we used to call a lounge suit. Then I can start to motor.
More Bill Nighy Quotes
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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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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.
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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 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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I like being in kids’ movies, and I like being in family movies.
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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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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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You can ruin your life wanting to be an actor.
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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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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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You tell yourself that you’re not auditioning but of course you work like crazy, and you prepare like mad. And you think, “Well, I won’t get that job. But maybe they’ll have another job sometime, and they’ll remember that I was good.”
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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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In life, if you have an enthusiasm for what they call ‘good manners,’ sometimes people don’t quite believe you. I’ve had that once or twice before, where they assume you can’t be for real.
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I have nothing against romanticism. I’m all for it. I’m helpless in the face of romance.
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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.’
BILL NIGHY