The Pinstripe Pirate: How “Living” Star Bill Nighy Overcame His Karaoke Nightmare and Became an International Treasure

After about 50 years in the business, Bill Nighy is used to people getting his last name confused. It actually rhymes with “sigh”: the “y” is silent. “My dad was very picky,” he says, “and for a while I fixed people up for him because he couldn’t take it when people said ‘Nag-j’. It really went through his head. But I’m very used to it. The first time I was on a show that was covered in a newspaper I was Bill Nigby. I was Bill Nighty – that’s a regular – and if there’s one that stands out above the rest is it Nightly. It’s funny when people get something wrong, they don’t get it wrong by simplifying it, they get it wrong by making it more complicated. So they expand my name. It’s always a little bit longer than what it should be.”

Nighy just turned 73 and gets his birthday present for his role as Mr. Williams on Oliver Hermanus LifeA 1953 remake by Akira Kurosawa ekiru, in which he plays a downtrodden British bureaucrat with a terminal illness. The role was written for him by screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro and the actor loved it.

“Well, it’s a remarkably large role,” he says. “You have a guy who has dedicated his life to an institution designed to provide reprieve and then he ends up in an extreme situation that drives him to try to make something actually happen instead of doing it Look something happens An important part of the call was that I was interested in how much self-control people in England in the 1950s demanded of themselves. It must be very bad for you, and I’m sure the mental hospital would agree. But there’s something funny about it, and it’s also quite heroic that people don’t bother with their deeper feelings.”

It helped, he says, that Sandy Powell’s wardrobe department gave him a defined look: a classic pinstripe three-piece suit. “I like it when I only have a suit,” he says. “I get institutionalized in it and I like that you don’t have to make decisions anymore.” However, the headgear was a different matter. “It’s the strangest thing, a melon. And if you’ve ever worn one, you know it. They are very, very heavy – it’s like wearing a crash helmet. I’m not entirely sure what they were protecting themselves from, but somehow it caught on. I have no idea why, but I don’t think it hindered me in the role in any way, as it added to his overall awkwardness, which was very helpful.

Nighy started acting at school, but despite encouragement from his acting teacher, he never really considered it a career. “It wasn’t like now,” he says, “where people know they are actors. There wasn’t much coverage then.” As he puts it, his interest was “just a long exercise in ostracism”: all his heroes were usually writers or musicians. “Like every other kid who reads a book, I thought, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ And it turned out I didn’t have the courage or determination to become a writer.”

Instead, he went to drama school. “And even then I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just do a few years here, then I’ll figure out what I really want.’ But then I got a job in a theater painting sets. You could do something like that back then. It was very good. You could watch other actors, and then I started studying. I didn’t learn anything at drama school except how to do very, very to be nervous because it was always very nerve-wracking for me to stand in front of a lot of people and perform.”

After a successful stint in local theatre, Nighy came to London in the late 1970s and made his big screen debut in 1979 as the delivery boy. The bitch, with Joan Collins. The only thing that comes to mind these days is the line “Flowers for Mrs Salmon!”. and the fee. “They gave me £150,” he says. “It’s funny what you remember.”

He then played five journalists on a run, and credited his agent Pippa Markham with keeping him going in the industry. “She was smart enough to send me for so-called character roles,” he says. “I wasn’t comfortable with what I was supposedly qualified for, which was to be a young leader, and it was a pretty competitive field. I didn’t feel romantic or desirable or anything. I didn’t know it wasn’t necessary to be The; you just had to deed The. And I was horrible at the audition. I used to be too nervous. So if I needed an accent or just to occupy myself, I was more likely to get the job.”

The actor came to a crossroads in his career in 1998 Still crazy, in which he stars as aging rock singer Ray Simms. The audition took place at 9am at a disused tax office somewhere near Pinner, where Nighy was confronted with his worst fear: a karaoke machine. “When karaoke was introduced I swore I would never do it no matter what the weather ever stood in front of a karaoke machine. It’s my nightmare.”

He also had to wear velvet pants that flared out, a top that exposed his waist, and 4-inch platform shoes. “I was 46,” he says, “and they put extensions on me. It was just me, the director and the cameraman. They gave me a microphone stand and…you know what? I had to sing karaoke on ‘Smoke on the.’ Water by Deep Purple. I had two choices: leave the building and say, ‘I can’t do this’ or simulate sex with the microphone stand. I have. I saw the cameraman’s shoulders shake because he was laughing so hard and that made the difference.”

Ray Simms revealed a wryly humorous, smug side of Nighy that led directly to his most famous role, as pop star Billy Mack in Richard Curtis love actually in 2003, and around that time words like “dodgy” started appearing in his clips. A lot of. “All the words that seem to describe me start with an L,” he says. “There are dodgy, slim – of course – lazy, relaxed…” He laughs. “Try wandering through my mind and see if I’m relaxed!” Perhaps the best description, however, came from comedian Billy Connolly. “He said I had rock ‘n’ roll legs, which was very flattering to me.”

love actually opened the door to Hollywood, leading to a call from Gore Verbinski asking if he wanted to play the amphibious villain Davy Jones Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Nighy hesitated, but Verbinski insisted. “Come on,” said the director, “how often do you end up in a pirate movie?”

The biggest problem was that Nighy knew nothing about motion capture. “They showed me pictures of the octopus man and it was the scariest thing on the ocean waves,” he recalls. “Then they gave me computer pajamas and stuck 250 dots on my face. Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were there, they looked like gods and I looked like someone who doesn’t like Devo. It was quite sad. But I’m pretty proud of myself. The first few days I was walking around with white bumps all over my pajamas and all over my face and a lump on my skull, and I didn’t run to the airport.”

For most of his career, Nighy has performed in theater alongside his film work, although he has not appeared on stage since 2015. that I will do more. But I say it every time. Every first night I stand in the wings and say the same thing: “This must never happen again.” But once you get going and the wind is at your back, it can be pretty awesome. And you kind of get an immediate reaction, especially if it’s funny. I only do plays with jokes in them; I find it vulgar to invite people to sit in the dark for two hours and not tell them a joke.”

Is there anything left for him to overcome? “I don’t think so,” he says. ‘I have never thought so When I was younger, people used to say, “Are there any roles you’d like to play?” No, I don’t feel like playing anything. I don’t feel like trading. I remember when I first started hearing two things that I thought immediately disqualified me. One of them asked Laurence Olivier: “What is the most important requirement to become an actor?” and he said, “100 percent confidence.” I thought, “Well, I’m not self-conscious, so that counts for me.” And then I read that Rod Steiger once said: “You have to burn to act. If you’re not on fire, don’t act.’” He laughs. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve never burned myself, Rod, so I can’t.’