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.
I don’t think there’s an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It’s just that you’re standing up.
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.
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
If 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.
They’re at their most enchanting ’cause they just want to put it off, so they do a cabaret for you. You sit there thinking, “Please don’t let this end.”
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.
With stage, you feel completely like you’re just in a bubble. I love not being able to see anything. I love coming out and I can’t see anything because the lights are so bright and it’s pitch black. That’s ideal for me, that’s when I have the best time.
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.
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.”
![Bill Nighy Quote - I am a fan of rehearsal. I like doing it [scene] over and over and over and over until it looks like you never did it before.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/i-am-a-fan-of-rehearsal-i-like-doing-it-scene-over-683x1024.jpg)
