Bill Nighy Quotes & Sayings

I was never a hippy, per se. — Bill Nighy

Somebody asked me recently, 'Have you done a lot of plays?' I thought hang on. I used to do nothing but plays. I've been very fortunate that on several occasions I've had jobs where I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world whatever you had to offer - however much money you've got. — Bill Nighy

Emma Watson is adorable in the extreme. She is such a lovely person. — Bill Nighy

Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar. — Bill Nighy

I don't seem to be able to learn from experience or anything useful. History doesn't help me. Precedents don't inform my experience. — Bill Nighy

One of the things that is assumed about actors is that they are extrovert, which is almost never the case, in my experience. — Bill Nighy

I have a perfectly average skewed perception of myself. We often don't know what we're like. — Bill Nighy

Often in America people would assume that [as an English actor] you've had some sort of deep, classical training, or that you're a Shakespeare enthusiast. I have zero interest in me performing Shakespeare. — Bill Nighy

When it comes to casual clothing, my enthusiasm for clothes starts to waver. — Bill Nighy

I don't even own a car. — Bill Nighy

I'm not famous for my back story investigations; I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script. — Bill Nighy

I don't dislike the process of animation ... I find it daunting, but only as much as I find everything daunting. — Bill Nighy

One of the great regrets of my life is that I smoked. If I could say anything to anybody starting out in life it would be, 'Whatever you do, don't smoke'. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop. — Bill Nighy

I know really, really famous people who are terrified every time they walk on to a stage. — Bill Nighy

Anti-Semitism and Fascism have a long, mysterious, bewildering, poisonous and vile history and it's not exclusive to the Germans. — Bill Nighy

I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people. — Bill Nighy

One of the reasons I like a suit is because I've never been that keen on my body. The shape a suit presents is always going to be better than anything I can do. — Bill Nighy

If you ask any actor "What single thing would make you really, really happy?" Among the top five things they'd say is not having to audition anymore. — Bill Nighy

From my point of view, it's very refreshing to play a regular human being and not someone from another dimension. When I say "not act," what I mean is just to be as natural and as normal as possible. — Bill Nighy

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It's a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me. — Bill Nighy

I really have no interest in delivering the iambic pentameter, I just want to kill myself. I don't mind other people doing it. I say that, but really I don't want to watch other people doing it. I get embarrassed. — Bill Nighy

It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world. — Bill Nighy

There are only three men in the world who are licensed to wear shorts: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise. — Bill Nighy

The degree of notoriety I have is fine and easy. There's nothing hysterical about it. — Bill Nighy

I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up. — Bill Nighy

One of my great regrets, and I don't have many, is that I spent too long putting people's status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities. I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone's name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff. — Bill Nighy

I love imaginative representations of a possible near-future, where you look at the technology and you think, "Well, yeah, that could really nearly be true." I like those kinds of backgrounds. — Bill Nighy

Never go anywhere you have to wear brown shoes. — Bill Nighy

I have nothing against romanticism. I'm all for it. I'm helpless in the face of romance. — Bill Nighy

I never go on the net or the web, or whatever it's called. — Bill Nighy

I'm not an actor who consciously accesses bits of my life, in order to play parts. Obviously, you don't need to have been a father to play one, otherwise everyone who's been a father would be able to act. — Bill Nighy

When you are in something that you're proud of and it's funny and it's a good night out and all of those things, there's nothing quite like it. The rewards are proportionate to the amount of alarm and distress it causes you. — Bill Nighy

I'm a jacket man. And if I'm without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don't know how to operate in shirt sleeves. — Bill Nighy

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing. — Bill Nighy

I am a fan of rehearsal. I like doing it [scene] over and over and over and over until it looks like you never did it before. — Bill Nighy

If you ever see me in a social setting wearing any sort of sportswear, then you know I'm in crisis. — Bill Nighy

I got briefly mistaken for someone who might be good in bed, which was very, very good. — Bill Nighy

Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth. If you imagine yourself having to spend two and a bit hours cooking bolognaise, remembering a whole major work by David Hare and speaking it at the correct moment between chopping carrots and stirring the onions in front of an audience - the normal human response is 'Please, can I go to the airport?' — Bill Nighy

I generally do things I'm proud to be in and generally I'm in things people like. — Bill Nighy

My dad had a personal style which was very attractive. It was quite reserved and quite elegant, and it was infectious. — Bill Nighy

I've worked with Len Wiseman before, on the 'Underworld' series, in which I was a vampire. The first two of those were his first two films. And I admire him beyond measure. I think he's tremendous, as a man and as a director. — Bill Nighy

In the street, people talk to you about all kinds of things, but by far, the most number of people talk to me about Love, Actually. — Bill Nighy

I never mind doing press; it's never bothered me. — Bill Nighy

The job is the same - to attempt to make it sound like you've never said it before and as if it's just occurred to you. And that's the same whether you're on camera or whether you're on stage in a room full of people. — Bill Nighy

You get older and you see yourself and say, 'God, he's old, who's that?' — Bill Nighy

I've never been a great enthusiast about how I look and I am very ... when I was young I had a real anti-talent for inventing myself as unappealing - craven and unremarkable. — Bill Nighy

The phenomenon of vampires has always appealed to me. Everyone kind of likes a vampire story because it almost could be true. — Bill Nighy

One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything. — Bill Nighy

I find it hard to relax around any man who's got the second button on his shirt undone. — Bill Nighy

I'm not a financial expert. The Robin Hood tax seems to me a very simple and beautiful idea. I don't see the problem. — Bill Nighy

I quoted David Hare one of his lines the other day to illuminate whatever point we were trying to make in the conversation, and I said 'What play was that?' and he said 'It was your line, you said it about a hundred and fifty times in The Vertical Hour.' — Bill Nighy

I don't normally watch films I'm in because I'm squeamish about that and it takes me quite a long time to recover and I have to go to work. I'm not being coy or cute, but it's just true. — Bill Nighy

I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they'd arrest you for crimes against acting. — Bill Nighy

Jerry Bruckheimer says that he makes films that he would want to see, and it seems that that coincides with what a lot of people want to see. — Bill Nighy

I'm lucky that I get to play a wide variety of parts. — Bill Nighy

When people warned me there would be long periods out of work if I became an actor, I couldn't keep a straight face because that was exactly what I had in mind. — Bill Nighy

I like being in kids' movies, and I like being in family movies. — Bill Nighy

In life, if you have an enthusiasm for what they call 'good manners,' sometimes people don't quite believe you. I've had that once or twice before, where they assume you can't be for real. — Bill Nighy

There is something, yeah, I mean traditionally it's more fun to play bad guys than it is good guys and when you're playing a bad guy, yeah, the fun in it is to see how scary you can be, how horrible you can be. And it's surprising what you come up with. — Bill Nighy

I would like to change everything, but obviously not everything. I've been incredibly fortunate. I guess everybody would do this, but I'd go back to my younger self and say, "Lighten up. Take it easy. Relax. Don't be so anxious about everything. Try to be in the day. Try to not have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow." — Bill Nighy

You have all these plans to act, and maybe do it rather elegantly, and then they turn the rain machine on. — Bill Nighy

You can ruin your life wanting to be an actor. — Bill Nighy

I'm probably the only person who actually remembers pirate radio. — Bill Nighy

You tell yourself that you're not auditioning but of course you work like crazy, and you prepare like mad. And you think, "Well, I won't get that job. But maybe they'll have another job sometime, and they'll remember that I was good." — Bill Nighy

When you have a family, or even when you're just seeing a girl, it's difficult to be skint. — Bill Nighy

Actors always talk about taking their work home and I always think: 'What are you on? You just turn it off. You are at work and then you go home.' — Bill Nighy

I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke. — Bill Nighy

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again. — Bill Nighy

All actors who have been around for a long time, which I have, and have been skint for long periods, which I have, find it difficult to turn down jobs. If I turn anything down my stomach turns over. I feel sick. It feels like gambling. — Bill Nighy

If I'm going to appear in front of people I like to look my best. — Bill Nighy

I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn't operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it's actually also true - if I want to appear in public I want to look my best. If I'm onstage I like to do contemporary work, largely because of the trousers, because of the clothes. I like a decent, what we used to call a lounge suit. Then I can start to motor. — Bill Nighy

I have never owned a computer. I am one of those weirdos. I've never needed a computer. I'm lucky that I have a job where I'm not required to use one. — Bill Nighy

I don't want to associate myself with any specific group of politicians. — Bill Nighy

The great thing about animation is it's like the radio. I used to do lots of radio when I was a kid, and you get to play parts you would never get to play ordinarily. — Bill Nighy

When I do a play, it's like agreeing to be ill for a couple of months. — Bill Nighy

I have no memory, any at all, of actually performing the play, no recall in terms of the lines. I can't tell you any line from any play I've ever done. — Bill Nighy

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It's almost like the direct result of the way the West performs. — Bill Nighy

It can't be overstated how wonderful it is not to have to audition any more. Any actor will tell you, it's like Christmas. — Bill Nighy

I used to think that prizes were damaging and divisive, until I got one. And now they seem sort of meaningful and real. — Bill Nighy

I'm one of those weird people who doesn't even own a computer. — Bill Nighy

To be serious, the things you really want to relive are things like bedtime with your daughter when she becomes incredibly entertaining 'cause she doesn't want to go to sleep. They're at their most enchanting 'cause they just want to put it off, so they do a cabaret for you. You sit there thinking, "Please don't let this end." — Bill Nighy

When you've been going on about something for a while, it is always satisfying to discover that other people agree with you. — Bill Nighy

More people saw me in 'Love Actually' than had seen me in everything else I had ever done up to that point. — Bill Nighy

When a movie is called 'searingly honest,' it's almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get. — Bill Nighy

I've always slightly worried the kids who play football around my house. They know I'm an actor, but felt sorry for me because they'd never seen anything I've done. — Bill Nighy

Standing in front of a fake mountain with fake snow falling and seven girls dressed as Santarettes will stay in my memory. — Bill Nighy

If you are supposed to be villainous and have some sort of agenda, I like the idea of delivering that kind of character in a perfectly well-mannered way. — Bill Nighy

With stage, you feel completely like you're just in a bubble. I love not being able to see anything. I love coming out and I can't see anything because the lights are so bright and it's pitch black. That's ideal for me, that's when I have the best time. — Bill Nighy

If I ruled the world, every woman would have a Chanel suit in her wardrobe. — Bill Nighy

It's probably healthier to find fame later in life. — Bill Nighy

I'm not good at watching myself which I think is perfectly natural. I don't give myself a hard time about it. I am the worst critic. — Bill Nighy

I don't spend a lot of time with anybody. — Bill Nighy

I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life. — Bill Nighy

I never watch my own films. — Bill Nighy

I'm just aware of what I'm thinking and feeling but I do obviously have to get that to the back of the auditorium. So there are things like projection and filling the room, and not dropping the ends of lines - technical things which are important, but I don't think they change the way I feel in a scene. — Bill Nighy

I'm not a royal family watcher. — Bill Nighy

I'm not a World War II buff. I know a little bit about it, I was taught the other side of the story in school, so it was unfamiliar to me, the idea of a German resistance, and yet it was considerable. — Bill Nighy

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I'd meet beautiful women in the rain. — Bill Nighy

I like American black soul music, that was my first big enthusiasm. — Bill Nighy

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues. — Bill Nighy