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Full Name:Bill Nighy
Birth Name:William Francis Nighy
Famous As: Actor
Date of Birth: December 12, 1949
Place of Birth: Caterham, Surrey, England, UK
Height: 6' 1?
Nationality: British
Relationships: Diana Quick (partner, actress)
Daughter(s): Mary Nighy (actress, b. Dec 31, 1984)
Education: Attended Guildford School of Dance and Drama
Claim to Fame: As Billy Mack in movie Love Actually (2003)

Bill Nighy Pictures

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Bill Nighy Videos

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video Actor Bill Nighy discusses how he left home at the age of 15 to become a writer. Picture

Title: Bill Nighy Talks With Charlie Rose
Description: Actor Bill Nighy discusses how he left home at the age of 15 to become a writer.

video Paul Byrne talks to legend Bill Nighy for www.Movies.ie Nighy has been very busy of late making a host of new releases including Richard Curtis ... Picture

Title: Bill Nighy talks The Boat That Rocked & Pirate Radio
Description: Paul Byrne talks to legend Bill Nighy for www.Movies.ie Nighy has been very busy of late making a host of new releases including Richard Curtis ...

video An hour with Golden Globe winning actor Bill Nighy. He's currently on Broadway in David Hare's "The Vertical Hour". His latest ... Picture

Title: Charlie Rose An hour with Bill Nighy
Description: An hour with Golden Globe winning actor Bill Nighy. He's currently on Broadway in David Hare's "The Vertical Hour". His latest ...

video 64th Golden Globe Awards Winner in Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, Jan  07 Picture

Title: Bill Nighy Gideons Daughter (BBC)
Description: 64th Golden Globe Awards Winner in Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, Jan 07

video Actor Bill Nighy talks to Sir David Frost about visiting three remote villages in Tanzania to witness the impact that aid can have. Picture

Title: Frost Over The World Bill Nighy 08 Jun 07
Description: Actor Bill Nighy talks to Sir David Frost about visiting three remote villages in Tanzania to witness the impact that aid can have.

video The opening of Underworld: Evolution only gives us a taste of Bill Nighy as Viktor. Here are the first few seconds of the 2nd film, which ... Picture

Title: Underworld: Evolution Viktor (Bill Nighy) 1 of 2
Description: The opening of Underworld: Evolution only gives us a taste of Bill Nighy as Viktor. Here are the first few seconds of the 2nd film, which ...

video British stars like to celebrate their home traditions for Christmas as evidenced by Rufus Sewell, Bill Nighy, and Cate Blanchett Keywords:The ... Picture

Title: HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY BRITISH CHRISTMAS: CATE BLANCHETT, BILL NIGHY
Description: British stars like to celebrate their home traditions for Christmas as evidenced by Rufus Sewell, Bill Nighy, and Cate Blanchett Keywords:The ...

video Actor Bill nighy describes one of his techniques to making his acting seem realistic. Picture

Title: Bill Nighy Talks With Charlie Rose
Description: Actor Bill nighy describes one of his techniques to making his acting seem realistic.

 

Bill Nighy News and Gossip

  • Femail - Found Oct. 31, 2009
    FROM ASTRO BOY TO PIRATE RADIO: THE MANY LIVES OF BILL NIGHY EXCLUSIVE Bill Nighy, Astro Boy Interview by Paul Fischer It is fortunate for all of us
  • MaleFirst Mens Magazine - Found Oct. 29, 2009
    Bill Nighy's director criticised him for using funny voices.
    Bill Nighy's voice rap - STV.tv
    Explore All

    MaleFirst Mens Magazine
  • Film Experience Blog - Found Oct. 26, 2009
    Garai, Eddie Redmayne, and a delectably absurd Juno Temple) with seasoned performers (Julie Christie, Bill Nighy, Christopher Lee), is wasted...
  • Variety - Found Oct. 25, 2009
    Hanson, who had gone into too much detail in explaining why honoree Katie Holmes was so talented.Presenter Bill Nighy also provided a bit of...
  • MaleFirst Mens Magazine - Found Oct. 23, 2009
    Bill Nighy has waded in on the rumours surrounding a possible Pirates of the Caribbean calling the announcement of the film 'unreliable'.
  • Cinema Blend - Found Oct. 22, 2009
    Today Pirates co-star Bill Nighy chimed in on the issue and confirmed that, yep, things aren?t looking good for Captain Jack?s next...
  • Mirror.co.uk - Found Oct. 21, 2009
    21/10/2009 Bill Nighy has joked about the extra-tight security surrounding the Harry Potter scripts.
  • NewsBlaze - Found Oct. 28, 2009
    But I'm please if people do like it." Bill Nighy's voice rapMeanwhile, Bill is hoping to reprise his role of Davy Jones in the fourth 'Pirates...
  • Watford Observer - Found Oct. 21, 2009
    Bill Nighy has joked about the extra-tight security surrounding the Harry Potter scripts.
  • Kidderminster Shuttle - Found Oct. 21, 2009
    Bill Nighy has joked about the extra-tight security surrounding the Harry Potter scripts.
 

Bill Nighy Biography

Bill Nighy
extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Bill Nighy

Bill Nighy in 2009
Born William Francis Nighy
12 December 1949 (1949-12-12) (age 59)
Caterham, Surrey, England, UK
Occupation Actor/Comedian
Years active 1975–present

William Francis "Bill" Nighy (pronounced /ˈnaɪ/;1 born 12 December 1949) is an English actor and comedian. He started working in theatre and television, before his first cinema role in 1981, and is perhaps best known to international film audiences for his roles in Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead, Notes on a Scandal, Underworld, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Valkyrie, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hot Fuzz, Stormbreaker and lending his voices to animated films Flushed Away and The Magic Roundabout. He is also known for being the narrator on Meerkat Manor. He will also play the role of Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister for Magic in the upcoming films Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Contents

Early life

Nighy was born in Caterham, Surrey. His mother, Catherine Josephine (née Whittaker), was a psychiatric nurse who was raised in Glasgow, and his father, Alfred Martin Nighy, managed a car garage and worked as a mechanic.2345 He has two older siblings, Martin and Anna. Nighy attended The John Fisher School, Purley. He trained at the Guildford School of Acting, formerly known as The Guildford School of Dance and Drama.

Career

After two seasons at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, Nighy made his London stage debut at the National Theatre in an epic staging of Ken Campbell and Chris Langham's Illuminatus!, which opened the new Cottesloe Theatre on 4 March 1977, and went on to appear in two David Hare premieres, also at the National.

He has starred in many radio and television dramas, notably the BBC serial The Men's Room (1991). He claimed that the serial, an Ann Oakley novel adapted by Laura Lamson, was the job which launched his career.6 More recently he has featured in the thriller State of Play (2003) and costume drama He Knew He Was Right (2004). He played Samwise Gamgee in the 1981 BBC Radio dramatization of The Lord of the Rings (where he was credited as William Nighy), and appeared in the 1980s BBC Radio versions of Yes Minister episodes. He starred alongside Stephen Moore and Lesley Sharp in the acclaimed short radio drama Kerton's Story first aired in 1996. He had a starring role in the 2002 return of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, portraying crooked politician Jeffrey Grainger. He has also made a guest appearance in the BBC Radio 4 series Baldi.

Two of Nighy's most acclaimed stage performances were in National Theatre productions. Taking the role of Bernard Nightingale, an unscrupulous university don, in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (1993), he engaged in witty exchanges with Felicity Kendal, playing the role of Hannah Jarvis, an author; and he played a consultant psychiatrist in Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange (2000), for which he won an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor, and which transferred to the West End at the Duchess Theatre the following year.

Bill Nighy outside the Music Box Theatre on Broadway following a performance of The Vertical Hour.

Nighy received some recognition by American audiences for his acclaimed portrayal of overaged rock star Ray Simms in the 1998 film Still Crazy. In 2003, Nighy played the role of the Vampire Elder Viktor in the American production Underworld and returned in the same role for the sequel Underworld: Evolution in 2006 and again the same role in the prequel Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. In February 2004, he was awarded the BAFTA Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as shameless, washed-up rocker Billy Mack in Love Actually (a role foreshadowed by his Still Crazy character) and followed this up at the BAFTA Television Awards in April with the Best Actor award for State of Play. He also appeared in the comedy Shaun of the Dead.

In early 2004, The Sunday Times reported that Nighy's was on the short-list for role of the Doctor in the 2005 revival of the BBC television series Doctor Who.7(Christopher Eccleston ultimately filled the role.)

In 2005, he appeared as Slartibartfast in the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and also in the one-off BBC One comedy-drama The Girl in the Café. In February 2006, he appeared in scriptwriter Stephen Poliakoff's one-off drama, Gideon's Daughter. Nighy played the lead character, Gideon, a successful events organiser who begins to lose touch with the world around him. This performance won him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Mini-series or TV Movie in January 2007. Also in 2006, Nighy made his Broadway debut at the Music Box Theatre alongside Julianne Moore in The Vertical Hour, directed by Sam Mendes.

Nighy appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, where he played the principal villain, Davy Jones. He reprised the role in the 2007 sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. He also provides the narration for the 2007 BBC series Meerkat Manor. Recently, he played the role of Richard Hart in Notes on a Scandal, for which he was nominated for a London Film Critics Circle award. He has twice played burned-out rock stars: Ray Simms in Still Crazy and Billy Mack in Love Actually. Nighy also appeared as General Friedrich Olbricht, one of the principal conspirators, in the 2008 film Valkyrie. He had played an SS officer in the 1985 Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil, which examined, inter alia, the struggle between the SA and the Nazi Party leadership (supported by the SS). In Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Nighy reprised the role of Viktor. Nighy is also set to star in a film Wild Target8 alongside Emily Blunt. It will be filmed on Isle of Man and London.

In July 2009, he announced he will play Rufus Scrimgeour in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.9 Ironically, Nighy had already worked with director David Yates three times and with the majority of Harry Potter cast in previous movies being English, Nighy, when asked about the role in Half-Blood Prince after shooting on the film was completed, joked, "I think I am the only remaining English actor not to work in Harry Potter."10 When finally cast as Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour in Deathly Hallows, Nighy said, "I am no longer the only English actor not to be in Harry Potter and I am very pleased."11

It has also been announced that Nighy will star in the biographical films about the life of Elliot Spoerer, The Rise and Fall of the Real RocknRolla, playing Spoerer's grandfather, Jimmy Makin. The film is currently in pre-production and no date has been set for release.citation needed

Personal life

Nighy shared a 27-year-relationship with British actress Diana Quick,12 with whom he has a daughter, actress and writer Mary Nighy. Bill Nighy currently lives in London and still spends a great deal of time with Diana.

He is a supporter of Crystal Palace Football Club and is the Patron of the CPFRIS (Crystal Palace F.C. Fast Results & Information Service) Disabled Children's Club.13 He is also a patron of the Ann Craft Trust.14

He has Dupuytren's contracture, a condition which causes the ring and perhaps other fingers of each hand to be permanently bent inwards towards the palm.

Work

Theatre

Radio

Filmography

Upcoming

References

  1. ^ Johanna Schneller (17 September 2009). "If it's candy, not caviar, the mag's in trouble". The Globe and Mail (Globe Review): pp. R1, R4 at R4. http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090917.AFESTIVALGOER17ART1824/TPStory/TPEntertainment/. "[P]eople still don't know how to pronounce my name. ... It rhymes with sigh." 
  2. ^ The BILL NIGHY Experience
  3. ^ Bill Nighy biography
  4. ^ Bill Nighy: the thinking woman's bagel The Independent, 19 February 2006
  5. ^ Family Detective Telegraph Family History
  6. ^ Schiff, Amanda (2 December 2008). "Laura Lamson Obituary". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/02/obituary-laura-lamson. Retrieved 2008-12-03. 
  7. ^ BBC - Doctor Who (David Tennant and Billie Piper)- News
  8. ^ Bill Nighy Is A Wild Target | Empire
  9. ^ Bill Nighy to star in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  10. ^ http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/01/07/bill-nighy-still-waiting-for-david-yates-harry-potter-casting-call/
  11. ^ "Bill Nighy to star in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". BBC. 2009-07-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8130000/newsid_8137100/8137104.stm. Retrieved 2009-07-06. 
  12. ^ Split between Nighy and Quick
  13. ^ Crystal Palace F.C. Disabled Childrens Club accessed 2 Jun 2007
  14. ^ Ann Craft Trust homepage
  15. ^ Duncan Macmillan (14 September 2009). "I Wish to Apologise for My Part in the Apocalypse". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cj8db. Retrieved 14 September 2009. 
  16. ^ Simon Brett, dramatised by Jeremy Front (8 – 29 September 2009 (1 episode weekly)). "A Charles Paris Mystery: Dead Side of the Mic". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft5bj. Retrieved 16 September 2009. 

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