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The biography page
Did You know - useless informations about Bill Nighy - collected from the world media |
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BILL NIGHY - an unobjective biography I gathered all the informations contained in this biography from several interviews, articles, from magazines, the internet, audio bits and tried to bring it into a context of time. If there’s something wrong or missing, please feel free to inform me at postmaster@billnighy.net. But please remember - It IS subjective and not everything should be taken seriously. The quotes above the chapter titles are usually quotes Bill made in interviews. * * * * *
"I am a bullet. And my heart goes boom."
- The introduction Bill kills. The time is Nighy. The last years gave journalists a lot of opportunities to come up with almost original formulations to describe a phenomenon, that was over 30 years in the making to become an overnight success: Bill Nighy, the probably eldest of the wild young stallions in the film business. It happens not often that fate smiles at an over 50-years old ex-alcoholic with Dupuytren's Contracture. Bill is not exactly what teenie magazines would call a poster boy. Sort of blondish-ex-beatnik looking, a slender body, making him look a little awkward sometimes, a nearly landscaped face, where alcohol and drug abuse left their marks, privately wearing thick glasses. So what is it that brings lots of people admiring this man, legions of women turning away from Alan Rickman and Colin Firth to offer their heart to Bill Nighy? Watching early films – yes, he was an attractive young man. Blue eyes, blond hair, a characteristic face with a strong chin (let’s be honest, this despcrition still fits). But actress Diana Quick, the woman on his side since the early 1980s wouldn’t have fallen for a handsome guy standing around looking mysterious in the first place. There is something very special about Bill. He doesn’t have to act cool to be cool. His coolness is uncoolness combined with a modesty that nearly hurts. His voice of course. There's no other part of the world having such a high percentage of smooth, dark and velvet actor's voices as Great Britain does, and Bill Nighy surely has one of them. And then there’s this thing about making people laugh. No, he isn’t a comedian at all. Watch him in “Lawless Heart” or “I Capture the Castle” - He’s a first class dramatic actor, but with the rare ability to not leave the fine line between comedy and trash. Take Ray Simms of “Still Crazy” for example – a real loser, but unmistakebly the real hero of this film, despite all Brians. And Bill’s a rocker. Women love rockers. Bottom line.
Since this is supposed to be the biography page you’ll probably expect me to come up with some hard facts. Here you are. * * * * *
"When you opened the door, there were petrol pumps. The big smells of my childhood were Swarfega, oil and Marmite sandwiches." – Childhood and Youth Bill Nighy was born Dec. 12th, 1949 in Caterham, a middle town in the south of London, in Surrey as William Francis Nighy to his father Alfred Martin, the manager of a car garage and his mother Catherine Josephine (born Whittaker), a psychiatric nurse. He was the third child, has an elder brother, Martin, and an elder sister, Anna. From his mother’s side there’s a little Irish blood running through Bill’s veins, his father’s family is “pure Croydon”. The family lived over the garage, the home came with the father’s job. Bill’s first love obviously was rock’n’roll, especially the Rolling Stones, which he is a fan of to this very day. Maybe the posing in front of a mirror using his toothbrush as a microphone was useful later in his life. Apart from that Bill describes himself as a child as “shy and enjoying being by himself”. There is a big age gap between him and his elder brother and sister –he once claimed they always were there for him and watched his back when he needed them. Though he claims nowadays how proud he is about his family being very close, childhood and youth didn’t seem too easy for young Bill. The following anecdote is an example: He probably wasn’t the exact picture of a model student, but there used to be the scheme of submitting something done at home to the school board to convince them one was good enough for grammar school. It was his father’s idea to choose a product of little Bill’s overwhelming creativity at that very time – a painting-by-numbers picture. It’s obvious how embarrassing it must have been for a young man of 11 or 12 years to show something like this to the teacher in front of the whole school. Anyway, it worked, and so he made it into boy’s John Fisher Grammar School in Purley. Then Bill was in the school theatre group, though he was far away from considering to see his future profession in acting. Everyone did it, and he could remember the lines with ease. And he was tall, so they never made him play girls. (and keep this in mind for the chapter about drama school!) Also he did one piece of writing for the school magazine. Boy stuff as he described it once. “ ‘There is a street like it in every town. The last street.’ Tough talk. What boys think. Looking through windows and seeing other people being happy, that sort of bollocks. Having your nose pressed up against the wrong windowpane, wanting to be somewhere, anywhere but here. That feeling you get when you see geese flying, the longing to go with them. Common or garden longing. That thing young people want. Showing the world how to live. Independence.” Independence. Aged 15, Bill decided he couldn’t bear it any longer to suffer from what he felt as domestic repressments. Leaving a letter to his parents, he ran away heading for the Persian Gulf together with a friend. Let’s pay respect that he at least made it to Southern France. That’s where he panicked for his own courage and scratched at the doors of the British consulate. His father sent money so the boy could return home, and Bill owed him 25 pounds for the next few years. He had left school without a single 0-level (though one article once mentioned 0-levels in English language and English literature), but decided to not go back there. His mother took him to the Employment Exchange. Being asked what he wanted to be, Bill said “an author”. Having read Hemingway and the great novelists, there seemed to be a chance for a dream come true. They got him a job as messenger boy at The Field Magazine in Mayfair. Obviously Bill showed real talent and interest, as he was invited for a training as sub-editor. Alas Bill saw his dreams not coming true fast enough, and once more he ran away from home. Aged 16, this time to Paris (where he and his friends slept under the Arc de Triomphe the first night), this time with the heavy wish to become a novelist. Like Hemingway. “I even rather grandly dropped my trousers on the beach at Folkestone, took off my underwear, and threw it into the sea, because I had read that my great literary hero Ernest Hemingway always went commando.” (Calm down, ladies. We’re talking a 16-year-old boy. Easy.) Needless to say the world’s still waiting for the great novel from the pen of Bill Nighy. Instead he had to beg after his money was spent. The owner of the brothel “Mme Cuckoo’s” offered Bill to earn 250 Francs if he slept with much elder women. And though he started calculating how many acts would bring him a Harley-Davidson, he refused. Later he remembers: ''When I ran away, I wrote a letter to my father instructing him not to try and find me. After he died, I found it in his papers, and it was arguably the most pompous, stupid thing I have ever read. It was a great regret to me by then. My father was a very decent man." After returning home Bill took several jobs. He tried to become a journalist at the Croydon Advertiser, but couldn’t because of the lack of the required 5 0-levels. He then worked as a labourer or at the psychiatric hospital his mother was working at. * * * * *
"I never thought I would be an actor for very long, if at all. I was an average mess as a young man and I didn't really have a thought in my head worth reporting. I was a bit of a dreamer." - Drama School It’s always the girls that make a young man do stuff. So our thanks go out to an unknown girl without who we’d maybe never ever have had the joy of watching Bill Nighy on screen or stage. She was going to a drama teacher’s college and convinced Bill to go for an audition at Guildford School of Dance and Drama. She even wrote an introductory letter for him. The audition board asked for one modern and one Shakespeare speech. What Bill did next was clear: Going to a library with his friend Gavin and stealing the complete Shakespeare works. He had the idea of giving a woman’s role as well and went for Pygmalion’s Eliza Doolittle (G.B. Shaw), because he wanted to give them a sample of his cockney accent. About the Shakespeare speech Bill discovered a text at the play “The Twelfth Night” and chose the role of Cesario, being unaware that Cesario in fact is a girl in disguise. Anyway, he seemed to be interesting enough, so they made him come back for a second audition with more suitable material. The Guildford School of “Prance and Murmur”, as the students called it, was where Bill studied and worked for the following two years. It was the end of the 60s, the spirit of free love was everywhere. Except around Bill. He once mentioned, that he discovered later that he probably was the only drama student that never got involved in any variation of sexual games. Maybe he really spent his time studying. At least they gave him the lead in Osborne's Epitaph For George Dillon. * * * * * “We as a species profoundly dig the idea that some of us get up and tell a story in the dark.” - Going on: First Steps into the Limelight It may have taken Bill some time to find his place in the theatre world. His first after-dramaschool-experience was in his early 20s, when he did a total of six lines in Tennessee Williams' "The Milk Train Does Not Stop Here Any More" at the Watermill Theatre near Newbury. He made some impression. Marcella Markham, an american divaesque actress in her 40s who was starring the play, was thrilled by young Bill's talent from the first rehearsal on. In the mid-70s Bill Nighy was a member of the Everyman Theatre Company based in Liverpool for a total of three years. Apart from acting Bill did nearly every job a theatre could offer, including doing the bar after the plays. The company at that time also brought out some great theatre names like Pete Postlethwaite (Brassed Off), Julie Walters or Jonathan Pryce, or Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale on the writer's side. Coming from this Bill also was part of a travelling drama group called "Van Load", with playrights of David Hare. According to BBC 4's Cultural State the group played 8-10 productions a year. They played supermarkets, jails, schools, army camps, church halls - everything with a plain floor suited. The late 70s saw Bill's face on the TV screen for the first time, when he appeared in the police series "Softly Softly". He was playing the third bank robber - and that was everything Bill's father had seen when he died in 1976. But it seems he had found trust in his son. Short time later Bill was in Joan Collins' (Dynasty) steamy film "The Bitch" protraying a delivery boy. Alas, that very scene became a victim of the cutting scissors and never made it into the complete film. * * * * * "I first spotted Diana on the front cover of a magazine with the headline, "Is this the most beautiful woman in the world?" I didn't know whether she was, but I did know that she was extremely beautiful." - Love and drugs and... His career went on and brought him to the National Theatre, where he starred in several David Hare world premieres such as "Pravda" (with the great Anthony Hopkins) or "A Map Of The World". Latter was in 1982 and left a deep impact in Bill's life. The impact was Diana Quick, a famous British actress, which you probably know from "Brideshead Revisited", who was doing the lead in that play. Bill fell in love on stage and in real life and obviously made enough impression on Diana to keep her by his side till this very day. In 1984 their daughter Mary was born, who has taken her first successful steps to acting (You can see her at ''The Lost Prince''). When he's talking about Diana in interviews, there's usually a large amount of respect and love for her. He never mentioned it, as far as I know, but the fact that she not only postponed her acting career for their daughter for a time but also stood by Bill through hard times surely does play a part. Hard times? The fact that Bill Nighy is predestined to play ex-alcoholic, ex-drug abusing rock stars because of his past is no secret. It was the early 80s when he started drinking "to an unhealthy degree", as he's putting it. It's not clear whether he did because he considered it cool or because of some stress, but his collegues were with him in this. Drinking, more drinking, taking mind-altering substances to be able to drink more... There seemed to be anything health damaging Bill didn't consume at that time. You can see the signs of this abuse very clearly when you look at his face. After getting help he became "a sober alcoholic" at the very date of May, 17, 1992 (which can be considered his second birthday). Nowadays he's living a rather clean life style, even doing yoga, since he quit smoking Sept. 13, 2003 (the fact that he still knows the exact dates, tells you, how important those days are for Bill). "I didn't know if I'd be able to stop smoking but by some miracle I did. I still haven't got over it - every day I think, 'I don't smoke!' " The only thing he's still addicted to, along with rock'n'roll music, seems to be Coke. And with the impressive way up Bill's career is now going, a good health is probably the most important thing. * * * * * "I'm a lucky boy. I've been in world premieres of plays which I think will be performed a hundred years from now (...) - and this is what I will tell my grandchildren, that I worked with those writers."
- Out of our little minds and into the big time (Yes, I stole this line from Groucho Marx. He would 've wanted it)
The Eighties - and Bill was discovered for the big screen. Alas, it's not easy to discover him in those films. John le Carré's "Eye Of the Needle" or "Little Lord Fauntleroy" only featured him in small roles. And productions like "Phantom Of the Opera" should better be forgotten (my personal opinion). Despite this he played at the National Theatre very successful in the mentioned above "Pravda" and "A Map of the World" or "Mean Tears".
It took the public some more years to notice Bill on screen. TV screen that was, and Bill made some impression appearing in the mini series "The Men's Room". He played a serial adulterer, and critics and audience were amazed. It was some sort of short-termed fame, and Bill went back to the stage, starring in some of the real big theatre hits of the Nineties: Cechov's "The Seagull", the world premieres of "Arcadia" and "Betrayal", and, which seems to be his greatest personal success, taking over the lead from Michael Gambon in David Hare's "Skylight" at the Vaudeville in 1997. The TMA awarded him best actor for this.
The time was there to hit the screen once more, and this time it was a hit. In 1998 Bill Nighy played Ray Simms, an ex-alcoholic, ex-drug abusing rock singer in the British blockbuster "Still Crazy",a character reminding a little to MTV's now soap star Ozzy Osbourne, long before the show was on. Alas, the film wasn't much of a success outside UK, but still "Still Crazy" counts amongst the best English films of all time. The secret is, that there's real rock'n'roll, real life, real pain. The fact that Bill not only put his experiences and his love to rock music into this character, but also insisted of doing the singing himself (and he did one hell of a job, his voice really gives me goosebumbs on "Dirty Town"), does make this film very special not only for fans. For the comic side of Ray Bill even got the Peter Sellers Award. You can imagine how happy Bill, the huge Stones fan, was about the rumour, that "Still Crazy" is a part of the video library in the Rolling Stones' tour bus.
From this time on, Bill's name seemed to be on every director's wish list. He appeared in "Blow Dry" as the opponent of Alan Rickman, held his memories as a ball in a very memorable scene in "Lucky Break" and also played out his dramatic talents in independent productions like "The Lawless Heart" (for which he won the Best Actor at the British Independent Film award).
If you take a look at his filmography one can only wonder that he still had the time to do theatre. But he did and he did very well. Back to the National Theatre he played in the sophisticated "Blue/Orange", for which he was nominated for the Olivier Award. TV viewers put Bill in their hearts when he played the senior editor of a newspaper in BBC's award showered mini series "State of Play". Bill himself won a BAFTA Award as best actor on TV. The rest is known to the world. In 2003 Richard Curtis offered the role of another ex-alcoholic rock star to Bill. Billy Mack in the christmas blockbuster "Love Actually". Supposed to be more of a gimmick character, Billy Mack turned out to be the talk of the town. Fans of Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth entered the cinema, Bill Nighy fans were leaving it. (No, nobody killed anyone, please don't be silly) Another Peter Sellers Award, another BAFTA, a London Film Critics Award, a Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Bill's outstanding performance. Billy Mack's on-film-hit "Christmas Is All Around" (and once again Bill did the singing himself) even was really released as a single and hit the British charts to No. 16. The savings were for charity organisation "COMIC RELIEF". Also for COMIC RELIEF were the savings of a concert at the Oxford Playhouse on May 24th, 2004, where Bill did "Christmas Is All Around" together with the musicians from Radiohead. There seems to be no end to the ladder of success Bill is climbing at the moment. Appearing as a vampire in "Underworld" and the zombie stepfather of "Shaun of the Dead" he now even is stuff for the people having the urge to only like cool and evil things. But still demanding film fans do find satisfaction in gems of TV entertainment like ''The Girl In The Cafe'' (2005) and ''Gideon's Daughter'' (2006). And it looks like future's still coming up roses for Bill Nighy. After 2005's blockbuster ''The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'' (after the novels of the late Douglas Adams) when he played in a star-packed cast, 2006 is about to send him to new heights: Playing the big bad - Davy Jones - in ''Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest''. There even was a rumour about Bill being the new Dr. Who, people talked about Bill being the next Voldemort. It's a miracle, why his name wasn't mentioned once when they were looking for the future James Bond. The good genes have been spread. Daughter Mary (as mentioned above) and niece Jo-Anne have chosen the way on the big screen, too, with first film credits. * * * * * “If they’re looking for somebody to play a man of a certain age who is falling apart, my name does seem to drift through their minds. I should either be flattered or I should change my tailor or something.” - What else?
Bill now lives
in northern London together with Diana, daughter Mary, two dogs and a cat named
Ziggy with only one eye. He doesn't live a very Hollywood life style. Amongst
his favourite wastes of time is walking Tibetan terrier Nellie and Smokie, a
rescue dog of no clear race. (and having such a dog myself I can say: They're
the best you can get). When time allows it, he loves sitting down with a good
book (preferably an early Hemingway), a good cup of tea (Yorkshire tea) and music of the heroes of his youth, like The Stones, The Who, Van
Morrison or Marvin Gaye. And when there's time left, Bill loves football as
every english male (His favourite team is CRYSTAL PALACE) or is improving his skills as air-guitarist, probably the
only one tuning his instrument on a regular base. There are less signs of luxury
to his life - A closet full of light blue shirts and two dark blue Armani coats (one
for wearing, the other one for times to come). And time is working for the
phenomenon called BILL NIGHY... by Ulrike Scherling drawing by Susan Balee
Awards and Nominations:
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