The BILL NIGHY Experience

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THE OFFICIAL INTERVIEW

Let’s stay for a bit longer on the negative trip: Could you talk about the most embarassing experience you ever had in filming. Or make that the most embarassing experience you’re willing to talk about.

         Yes, that’s more like it. Everything that has to do with pretending to make love to a woman. It’s deeply, deeply embarassing, because you do it in a room full of people. Lots of men, lots of women. And you have to have your bum made up, that’s a really embarassing moment, and you have to simulate passion with noises, and you never know what noises other people make, so it’s quite embarassing... In 'People Like Us', which was a comedy series, a series in which I played, once again I played an older man with a younger girlfriend, and in order to make me young my girlfriend takes me out in the story to a shop and buys me a pair of very low-slung combat trousers that come down very low on your hips, and a very big pair of trainers, very brightly coloured trainers, and when you’re my age that’s a very, very sad and lonely place to be. We were filming in the streets, and I had to walk up and down in public, with my trousers falling down, and these very very big and bright trainers on, and people would look at me and would pick at me, and I looked very, very sad. But I hope it was funny.

Let’s finally leave the area of negative experiences... When you were at acting school, I think there was a time when you noticed that your future doesn’t lie in writing as a journalist or an author but in acting. Did you have dreams, ambitions back then? Do you think you’ve achieved them?

          I never ever imagined the things happening to me that have happened to me. Your immediate ambition each time is to make the next step forward. When I was at drama school my ambition was just to be considered an actor. I wanted it to be possible for someone to construct a sentence with my name and the word actor in it, quite casually. I just wanted to be accepted in a kind of community of actors without fuss. I didn’t feel like an actor and I wasn’t convinced that I could become one. Just to be involved with good writers and not to be a nuisance while on stage. I didn’t wanna be involved in things that were craven, in other words bad writing, in other words things that diminish our experience rather than enrich them. I didn’t wanna be involved in things that werde tedious or embarassing or cyincal or drab. Though I’ve been lucky, you know, I’ve been extremely lucky, that I’ve been able to appear in things that were pretty good. I’ve done my share of the other kind.

 You seem to have been quite a humble young actor. So there were never times when you were trying award acceptance speeches in front of the mirror?

          No, I never included myself in that group of people that might get prizes. It wasn’t like now that prizes are everywhere. No, I never rehearsed a speech in front of the mirror, I never thought I’d get a prize, and I was right. I mean, for 30 years I was absolutely spot-on. I was correct. I wasn’t mistaken. It happened relatively recently that I got prizes, and then I would absolutely not rehearse in front of the mirror. I mainly wind up in front of a microphone with nothing to say. And then I have to think of something quickly, because it’s too scary to think it beforehand. You just put things off, you know, if they’re scary. It’s standard procrastination. I didn’t think I’d ever be a prize-winning actor. Nobody dreamt of having a film career, because you didn’t know anyone with a film career. A result for me would’ve been to be able to work in a theatre for the rest of my life. No one round  our way worked in the theatre and you got to make some kind of living, dealing with plays, with writing, with literature, with beautiful things. With poetry with language with jokes. And we would do that to get paid for it, that was then absolutely enough. And it remains the major attraction of dealing with it, the language, the writers, the words. It’s a privileged situation. I’ve been privileged.

 When I hear you talk... am I right that maybe the stage is a bigger love for you than the film?

          No, I was thinking back to those days. I have equal respect and enjoy making films and appearing in plays. I mean, I grew up in the theatre, when I was talking earlier, you asked me about my dreams when I was at school, when I was at college. Then my dream of college would have been to have a life in theatre. I didn’t even think about being on television or being in a film. I don’t think I ever thought about it really. It sort just happened to othre people. I just discovered that you have to make money particularly if you have a family. But I also worked with the greatest writers working on television in my time, and i worked with the greatest writers and actresses and actors working in film, so it’s all things pretty good. In the end it depends on the material if you want to do good stuff, just wanna do good material, in a very dry way putting it. I just wanna do the good stuff, cause that’s what’ll make people happy and give you dignity. And hopefully with a few cheap gags. That’s a joke. Hopefully things that don’t require you to wear stockings, among other things.  Things that require to wear prosthetics.  Like Viktor. No one will ever get me into that kind of prosthetic things again. Now with computers we’re free from the prosthetics thing, hopefully. And it took six hours for Viktor.

 Now the inevitable question at the end: What are your plans for the future? What can your fans look forward to?

          I’m not really sure. The only thing I’m sure about is that I’m doing the play for a while longer, a couple of months. And then ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 3’ comes out in May, so I imagine I’ll be doing a sort of promotion for that. And apart from that I will probably have a bit of a lay down after the play, it is really hard work. There are a few films around that may or may not happen. I’m going to do another voice over commentary for Meerkats 3 (Meerkat Manor). Meerkats is now appearing on terrestrial television in England.

 Is there anything you would like to say in the end?

          Only just to say thank you to everybody. I’m very touched and moved by everyone’s enthusiasm. It’s incredible, the activity on the website, everyone’s interest in the things that I do. It makes a big difference to the way I think about myself  and the way I go to work, that the people enjoy it that much as they plainly do. And it’s an honour and a privilege to have something like that complexity dedicated to what I do. Love and rock.

interview was done by Ulrike Scherling 23-01-2007

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