Richard said that when he talked to you about the part, you said you would do it if you didn’t have to act and that you made the decision to play him as almost understated so that other people can put their father into the role. Can you talk some more about how you put this character together?
Bill Nighy: Yeah, that was my deal. From my point of view, it’s very refreshing to play just a regular human being for a start and not someone from another dimension, which I dig too. But also when I say don’t act, what I mean is to be as natural and normal as possible. My model for the role was Jason Robards in a movie called Julia, where he played Dashiell Hammett and he was Vanessa Redgrave’s husband. It was a relatively small part, but he made a big impression on me because he was just there in the most simple and unaffected way.
A way of describing performances 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. He just did the job and he was just an absolutely beautiful, fond, powerful presence when she came home, doing all these incredibly dangerous things. I just wanted to be just there like that, and that’s as good as I can explain it. I just wanted to be around and win no prizes. Just be there, and whatever happens, happens. The quest for levels of naturalism never ends.
What was it like to work with Rachel McAdams?
Bill Nighy: I think she’s absolutely incredible. I know they all say that, but she’s just incredible. She does what Richard probably said, 360 degree acting; you can’t see round the back. There is no back. She’s touched, as they say in the cliché, by genius. She’s fantastic. I think she could do anything. She’s breathtaking. Do I make myself clear? [Laughs]
I just love that the characters are really down to earth because you don’t always see that in romance movies.
Bill Nighy: Yeah, me too. I love it, honestly, and I loved playing it from that point of view. It gave me a great sort of hunger for more of that kind of stuff. I love the fact that it’s quite daring in its way to put that stuff on a big screen and get away with it, and have people respond to it. It’s not what most people do when they pick up the pen to write a screenplay. They don’t think, “Oh we’ll do that bit between mom and dad, or we’ll do that thing that happens at home with families.”
It is kind of courageous and Richard does it so well. Maybe you can fake it, but I think it helps a lot if you’re a believer as it were, and he really is a believer. He doesn’t make movies to manipulate people. He’s not that guy. This is what he wants to say. He could make any movie he wants at this current point in his life and they would have given him the money. He could do that because he has generated millions and millions and millions of dollars, but this is the movie he wants to make, just this one. This is exactly what he wants to say and exactly what he wants to tell you. It’s not something that’s mysterious to people. Everybody struggles with it every day, all those questions about how to get the most out of your life and how to relish the so-called ordinary things and the beauty around you, all of that. He has the courage to say it again but in a beautiful way. I love it and I’m with you.
What’s coming up for you in the future?
Bill Nighy: I’m going back to India to make The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2, and everybody’s back together. I’ve also just made two films with David Hare who is the other great thing in my life apart from Richard Curtis. We’ve made a trilogy of films for television and they are collectively called The Worricker Trilogy and I’m a spy, I’ve waited a long time for that. In the second and third one which we just shot, I got to work with one of my great acting heroes, Christopher Walken, who is the funniest man I’ve ever met. It’s like being punched in the stomach. Winona Ryder is in it as well, and she’s absolutely sensational.
I also have a movie coming out called I, Frankenstein made by the same people who make the Underworld series and in which Aaron Eckhart plays Frankenstein’s creature, and I’m not a very nice piece of work. It should be cool because it’s a 3D movie, and it comes out I think in January.
Apart from that, currently I’m shooting a film called Pride which I think is going to be, unless we make a real mess of it, a really cool movie. It’s about the miner’s strike which took place in 1984 in England. Don’t panic, it’s a comedy. It’s written by a friend of mine called Stephen Beresford who was an actor and he’s a brilliant writer, he’s made it so funny. It’s about a bunch of gay guys in England who saw that miners had been invented by the then government as enemies of the state and were being spat out in the street and beaten up by policemen. It was tough being gay in 1984 in England. They decide to raise some money for them as many people did to try and counter the shameful way the government was treating them during that period. They became the second biggest fundraisers and it’s hilarious.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Bill for his time. Be sure to check out About Time when it hits theatres this Friday.
