Bill Nighy | actor | Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Bill Nighy

Profession: Actor
Place/Date of Birth: Caterham, Surrey, 12 December 1949

Q: You’re obviously a book-lover, what was the title of your doomed first novel.
I’m not going to tell you what it was called. I said it once and it was so embarrassing. When I was a young man my head was turned by Bob Dylan’s first LP, and I left home on the strength of it. I literally threw my suitcase out of the window, I could have used the door, but it didn’t have the same look. I went to Paris to be like F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. And surprise, surprise, I sat there for an hour and didn’t write a word, because I couldn’t stand the silence while I was trying to write. But I did write the title. And the pathetic thing was that I drew a margin, like you did at school, which is either very sad or very touching. But my novel will never happen.

Q: How about an autobiography?
I have been approached with some big money offers. I was very flattered, but I can’t remember anything about my life. And I’m not that old. It’s like Mick Jagger said, "Send the money back."

By Charli Morgan

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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Biography

On and off our screens and airwaves for over 30 years, one of Nighy’s most recent and reputed roles saw him hidden away behind inches of make-up as the villain Davy Jones, in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Born in Surrey to a psychiatric nurse and car mechanic, Nighy took his first nimble steps into the world of stage and screen as a pupil at the Guildford School of Acting. His first foray into fully fledged paid employment was at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, before he moved on to hit the glittering London scene with the National Theatre, where he appeared in Illuminatus!

Alongside notable theatre appearances, Nighy established himself as a familiar face with roles throughout the 80’s and 90’s, in such television productions as The Men’s Room and Kiss Me Kate, as well as on the silver screen in a couple of comedy classics, Curse of the Pink Panther and Guest House Paradiso.

The Millennium saw his career take off with an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor, following his performance as a consultant psychiatrist in the National Theatre production Blue/Orange, whilst in 2004 he won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in Love Actually – and if you weren’t a fan of that appearance, no doubt you loved his alternative role of 2004 in the other British big hit, Shaun of the Dead.

Between 2005 and 2006, Nighy appeared in the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy, The Girl in the Café and Gideon’s Daughter, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Mini-series, whilst his character in Pirates of the Caribbean saw him catapulted on to the world stage.

In 2007 he appeared in the award winning Notes on a Scandal, for which he was nominated for a London Film Critics Circle award.

November 2007