‘Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free!’ So says Bill Nighy’s character in the hit 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually. However, Nighy’s thoughts in real life could hardly be more different. Speaking with our reporter Xin Fan after his talk at the Union, he sums up his wisdom in a nutshell: ‘Don’t take drugs and pay your taxes, and don’t take anyone’s reputation at face value.’
Having previously graced its chamber in 2004, Nighy’s visit to the Oxford Union was an encore, albeit a delayed one. Whilst most Union speakers have specific agenda in addressing the university (Peter Andre, we’re looking at you) Nighy didn’t dwell on any of his current projects, preferring to ruminate on past performances, and his bemusement at acting in a bodysuit for CGI purposes. What, then, brings him back? ‘I don’t do a great deal of this sort of thing, but I do occasionally think I have something a bit different and practical to say to young people who aspire to act. I flat- ter myself that you don’t get that information everywhere.’ Evidently a humble man, which he is both in background and in person, Nighy clearly felt honoured to be invited to the Union, greeting the awed silence that met his ar- rival with a simple, ‘Fuck.’
Nighy is well qualified to comment on, well, life. His career has spanned several decades and has seen him receive numerous accolades for performances in films as diverse as The Girl in the Cafe and Shaun of the Dead. At times, Nighy’s emphasis on what he calls ‘finding another level of naturalism and working as myself’ has been stretched, never more so than when he played half-man, half-squid Davy Jones in the second of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Nighy might be striving for naturalism but he is as well known for his mannered delivery, à la Love Actually, as he is for his acting chops. There are noticeable inflections in Nighy’s personality, which often resemble those of some of his onscreen counterparts. The blurred line doesn’t bother Nighy. ‘Every actor thinks they’re doing a huge character job until they see the film and go “oh, that’s exactly like me”.’
When it does come down to encouraging Oxford students to try following in his footsteps, Nighy is cautious. The acting life seems to him pretty similar to that of a ‘professional gambler’, and he said that he is certainly under no illusions about his own ‘enormous good fortune’. The risks, he says, ‘are enormous. Bright, educated, lovely people I know have been affected by such ambitions, and not all achieve success.’
But Nighy is a risk-taker, a massive bungee enthusiast, and he wants to leave the door open for those who have a profound desire to emulate his acting success. The most important thing for Nighy is the craft itself, and for all its uncertainties, it is still, for him, ‘a primary art; an honourable tradition.’ And after all, as Nighy aptly puts it, ‘The world is precarious anyway. So what the heck.’
