Bill Nighy - The Boat that Rocked
The louche, late-blooming actor speaks to Time Out Sydney about the sounds and sartorial mistakes of the 60s
By Nick Dent
Bill Nighy leans forward in his chair in Sydney's Park Hyatt hotel and speaks very earnestly about his iPod. "I always christen a trailer with the Stones," he says. "It's always Goats Head Soup, and it's always the second track, '100 Years Ago.' Then it goes onto Dylan. It kind of controls the environment. Music's always been ludicrously important to me."
Indeed, the thin, graceful UK actor got his big break in the movies - 1998's Still Crazy - playing the washed-up lead singer of a 70s band trying to make a comeback. The film was hardly a success, but it led to Richard Curtis casting him as another elegantly wasted rock star, Billy Mack, in 2004's Love Actually. "Don't buy drugs," the debauched Mack memorably warned viewers of a children's program in Curtis's rude and sentimental romp. "Become a pop star and they give them to you for free."
The part won Nighy a BAFTA Award and the jobbing actor became, at the age of 54, a film star practically overnight. He's since appeared in everything from the Underworld trilogy (as vampire lord Viktor) to Valkyrie (as a Hitler-hating Nazi) and The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (as Slartibartfast). He was also Cate Blanchett's cuckolded husband in Notes on a Scandal. "It's been unexpected and surprising and gratifying," says Nighy of his late career bloom. "The great thing is that I don't have to go through the routine humiliation of auditioning, which is a massive thing if you're an actor. Not a day goes by when I don't thank my lucky stars."
For his third collaboration with Richard Curtis (the second was as a lonely politician romancing Kelly MacDonald in TV movie The Girl in the Café), Nighy again plays a popular music figure. In The Boat that Rocked, he's Quentin, the owner and captain of a pirate radio station operating offshore of 1960s Britain. Resplendent in a range of psychedelic suits, Nighy joins an all-star cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Rhys Darby playing maritime DJs.
Nighy remembers the age of the pirates well, when half the population of the UK would listen to illegal radio stations in order to hear rock'n'roll, of which the BBC played only two hours a week. "The government did this cool thing and made [pirate radio] illegal, which means you obtained outlaw status merely by tuning in," he says. He also remembers the fashions. "Nothing is overstated in the film. People really did wear trousers that awful."
Did Nighy? "I tried to steer clear of paisley, frankly, or anything too floral. I was more like what they later called a suedehead. It was basically Ben Sherman, John Smedley, mohair trousers and Madras jackets."
A graduate of the Guildford School of Dance and Drama, Nighy got his first acting job in 1970 and recalls attending that year's Isle of Wight Festival - headlined by Jimi Hendrix - sporting the short back and sides the role required. "It was like social death. The crowd would part, literally, as you walked along, because they assumed you were a policeman or in the armed forces, neither of which was going to get you laid in those days."
A distinguished career on the London stage followed, punctuated by the odd minor film role and the occasional plum such as Sam Gamgee in the 13-hour 1981 BBC Radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings ("I made more money than I had in my life").
Nowadays he enjoys far bigger paydays thanks to blockbuster roles such as the squid-faced Davy Jones in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films. "The good news was there was no make-up, because it was all computer generated. The bad news is I did have to wear a very sad, grey pair of computer pyjamas and a skullcap with white baubles all over them for computer tracking. It's bad enough standing next to Johnny Depp, but if you're dressed as Andy Pandy..."
Five weeks of the Boat that Rocked shoot took place on board the Timor Challenger, an oil rig rescue boat anchored in Portland Harbour, Dorset. "It was fun being on that boat. You'd think if you took a bunch of comic actors onto a boat and put a camera on them, there'd be blood on the floor, but there was a reckless absence of careerism of any kind. Richard Curtis is a very classy man and he creates a beautiful atmosphere."
Seasickness did pose a problem for some, however. "I had an edge on the other guys because I'm a squid, as you know," Nighy quips. "Squids don't get seasick."
The Boat that Rocked screens in cinemas from 9 Apr.
