Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
Love Actually, Pirates of the Caribbean, Underworld, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Bill Nighy was born in Caterham, Surry and trained at the Guilford School of Acting. His long and distinguished stage career began in regional theatre and has taken him to the top of his profession with critically acclaimed performances in the West End and on Broadway. A regular National Theatre player, he has appeared in numerous plays by leading dramatists, including David Hare, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter, gaining an Olivier Award nomination as Best Actor for his role in Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange.
His long list of television credits includes virtually every major drama series on British TV but it was his work on The Men's Room (BBC) in 1991 that brought him particular attention. More recently, he won a BAFTA Best Actor Award and a Royal Television Society Best Actor Award for his performance as a newspaper editor in the cult series State of Play. He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Mini-Series for his performance opposite Emily Blunt in Stephen Poliakoff's Gideon's Daughter in 2005, and was also nominated that year for the same award for his playing of Lawrence, a middle-aged Treasury official rejuvenated by love in The Girl in the Cafe.
He made his feature film debut in 1980 and has played a wide range of roles in a variety of British and international productions, but it was in 1998 that his performance as the aging rock vocalist in Still Crazy won him the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy, presented by the London Evening Standard. A second Peter Sellers Award came in 2003 with his performance as another washed-up musician, in Love, Actually, which also won him a London Film Critics Award and a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actor. That role also won him an award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, in conjunction with his performances in AKA, I Capture the Castle, and Lawless Heart.
He has become familiar, although not necessarily recognizable, to a massive worldwide audience, with his portrayal of pirate captain Davy Jones - half-squid, half-human - in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
His other film credits include the Underworld series, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Notes on a Scandal, Valkyrie (with Tom Cruise), the comedy Pirate Radio, the wartime drama Glorious 39, the all-star animated adventures G-Force and Astro Boy, Wild Target, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Rango (voice of Rattlesnake Jake, Arthur Christmas (voice of Grandsanta), and Wrath of the Titans (recently released).
He'll soon be see in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Tom Wilkinson, and in a remake of Total Recall (August 3, 2012 release date).
Bill Nighy at the Internet Movie Database