  Bill Nighy. (Handout) |
NEW YORK — What actor could go toe-to-toe with a talking guinea pig and emerge with his dignity intact? So glad you asked: Bill Nighy, that’s who.
A fixture on the British scene, Nighy, 59, is a veteran of stage, screen and television and probably best known to North American audiences as the aging rock star in Love, Actually or the squid-headed Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Nighy is currently starring in G-Force, a 3D Disney family movie about guinea pigs who are trained to be special agents. It opens Friday.
In G-Force, there’s a diabolical plan afoot for world domination (through household appliances) and Nighy plays a chilly corporate bigwig who is part of the scheme. The earnest little guinea pigs who want to save the planet are voiced by Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz and Tracy Morgan, with Nicolas Cage as a near-sighted mole and Steve Buscemi as a manic hampster. Who better to put up against the cute furry critters than the tall, angular, always-ironic Nighy?
“I’m working on my profile with the under-nines,” drawls Nighy, cheerfully. “I really like being in kids’ movies, because it’s such a big deal. It was such a big deal when I was a kid. And kids, when they compliment on anything, it’s just either a good movie or it’s not a good movie, they don’t have any other agenda. It’s just a pure accolade.”
Over the past decade, Nighy went from journeyman actor to movie star, courtesy of the Pirates films and such other movies as Underworld, Shaun Of The Dead, The Constant Gardener, Notes On A Scandal, Hot Fuzz, Valkyrie and Underworld: Rise of The Lycans.
The next feather in his cap will be a role in the seventh Harry Potter movie.
He is, not too surprisingly, really happy about that.
“I play Rufus Scrimgeour, who’s a wizard and the Minister for Magic, so he’s a pretty heavyweight guy. I’m really pleased, because I know most of the people involved and I worked with the director, David Yates three times before this.”
Yates started directing the Harry Potter movies with Order Of The Phoenix in 2007. “And I was with him when he got the job,” says Nighy. “I remember saying, ‘Well, maybe now I won’t be the only British actor not in Harry Potter,’ and he laughed. I’m very happy, because he’s a seriously gifted man.”
Nighy will also be seen this year in Wild Target, The Boat That Rocked and Glorious 39 (which will be at Toronto’s film festival in September). He’s one actor who really works a lot. “Well, I’m better at work than I am at life,” he says, rather seriously.
Any sort of role that he wouldn’t take on?
“I prefer to keep my clothes on at this time of life,” says the beautifully tailored Nighy. “I keep thinking, ‘Well, at least that’s over.’ I’m longing for the day when it’s absolutely out of the question, but there’s always another script that says, ‘He takes his top off,’ and I think, ‘Are you serious?’ ”
Nighy got his start as an actor, he claims, by falling in love, “And because I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway, basically. I left school very young, when I was 15. The only thing I was any good at was writing. So I ran away to Paris, because all the writers I admired — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford — had all been in Paris when they were young. So I figured I’d go there and write the great English, um, short story. And I didn’t write a word. I met a girl who was going to drama teaching college, and she said, ‘You could be an actor,’ and she was the first girl who had paid any sort of attention to me. She could have said ‘astronaut’ and I would have signed up.”
(As for the rest of Nighy’s romantic life, all we can tell you is that he lived with British actress Diana Quick for 27 years, and their daughter is the actress Mary Nighy, 25. Quick and Nighy were said to have separated last year, but they were photographed together at the London premiere of his movie The Boat That Rocked earlier this year, so ... your guess is as good as ours.)
Eventually, Nighy got into drama school. And he got acting parts. “And I used to drive the van and paint the sets, and I’m one of those weirdos who actually swept the stage. It makes me sound ancient! But I just kept getting jobs until they said I didn’t have to paint the set any more. And even then, for many years, I thought, ‘Any minute, I’m going to get around to doing what I’m going to spend my life doing.’ And then I got some very good parts in theatre and I began to get serious about acting.”
And after about 30 years of acting, Nighy got really famous. “Love, Actually is what upped the ante. It is odd, the transition, but I was lucky that it happened kind of gradually, because in London, I’ve been on television since I was in my 20s. So one in 20 people might smile at me on the street. And then it did go to one in five. Some days, you’re very famous. You can’t go anywhere. Other days you’re completely anonymous. There’s just a nice level of notoriety, and to me it’s a positive, and a healthy sign that something you’re doing is working out.”
He adds, “Sometimes in London, where I live, when a bus driver honks and waves his hand and grins at you, you think, ‘This is sort of like a dream.’ ”
liz.braun@sunmedia.ca
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