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Bill Nighy

Bill Nighy has built a career around precision: the measured pause, the sidelong glance and the line delivered with just enough dryness to change an entire scene. Born William Francis Nighy in Caterham, Surrey, in 1949, he found his first experience of acting in school plays before training for the stage at the Guildford School of Dance and Drama. His early career was rooted in theatre, including regional productions, Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and the National Theatre. Long-running collaborations with playwright David Hare became a defining thread, from Pravda and Skylight to the Johnny Worricker television films. Nighy’s stage work also included Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, while a Broadway transfer of Skylight brought him a Tony Award nomination. Screen recognition arrived gradually. The BBC serial The Men’s Room was an important early breakthrough, while Still Crazy gave him the part of ageing rock star Ray Simms. That role anticipated one of his best-known performances: Billy Mack, the irreverent singer in Love Actually. Nighy won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film, finding both comedy and vulnerability in a character who could easily have been played as a simple caricature. His range became increasingly visible across the 2000s. He played the vampire elder Viktor in the Underworld films, Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Davy Jones in two Pirates of the Caribbean films. Television brought equally substantial work, including State of Play, Gideon’s Daughter and the Worricker trilogy. He also appeared in Shaun of the Dead, The Constant Gardener, Notes on a Scandal, Pride, Their Finest and Emma. In Living, Nighy took the leading role in an English-language adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. His restrained performance earned Best Actor nominations from the Academy Awards, BAFTA, the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. It was a fitting showcase for an actor whose work often depends not on volume, but on control.