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How does one start a conversation with Bill Nighy? The esteemed 76-year-old English actor, especially beloved for his roles in Still Crazy, Shaun of the Dead and Love Actually, has a long and lauded career on stage and screen, and has won a couple of BAFTAs, a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. So the opening gambit for this interview should perhaps reflect all of this and have some gravitas.
It doesn’t. Instead, I dive right in the shallow end.
Hello, Bill. Vegemite tastes better than Marmite. Discuss.
He laughs.
“Now, Barry, I should tell you that I have actually lived with Vegemite,” he says. “In the old days when you went to Australia you couldn’t find Marmite and I must say, I did get to like Vegemite. But it’s sweet compared to Marmite, and the great appeal of Marmite to me is that it’s basically salt. And I’m a fool for salt.
“Somebody told me recently that the two white things – sugar and salt – are the things you really need to avoid. I did say that I think there’s a third white one – cocaine – which will mess you up even more.”
And that answer – discursive, wry, gently amusing – pretty much sums up why his podcast, Ill-Advised by Bill Nighy, has become a hit, topping the UK chart soon after it premiered last year and staying there for weeks.
The concept of the show is that people record and send in questions and quandaries for Nighy to mull over. How do I overcome procrastination? How do I conquer my fear of public speaking? What is the age limit for getting a tattoo? Why is my horse ignoring me? (Yes, someone from Mongolia really asked this.)
Nighy admits in each introduction that he is vastly unqualified to help anyone. But the appeal of the podcast is that it’s not actually about solving anyone’s dilemma. Instead, it’s about listening to Nighy ruminate in that understated, measured voice, in the process revealing a lot about himself.
In fact, the reason I knew to ask him about his love of Marmite was because he has talked about it on the show.
One thing is for sure: people really want to engage with Bill Nighy. The call-out for questions resulted in thousands of responses.
He can charmingly entertain just about any subject that is tossed at him but he has specialty areas, which include Marmite (as you now know), lounge suits, bookshops, literature, soul and R&B (his favourite artist of all time is Aretha Franklin), football, moisturiser, “a bit about art” and, it goes without saying, acting. His take on acting is refreshingly workmanlike. When I ask him about bad advice he has received over the years in his chosen field, he doesn’t hesitate.
“There’s some time-honoured advice for actors that is ‘you’ve got to feel it’,” he says. “And, of course, that is breathtaking bollocks. What are you going to do on a wet Wednesday – call in and say, ‘sorry, I’m not feeling it today’?
“And the other one is ‘don’t learn your lines, it will lend you a sense of spontaneity’. The reverse is true. You learn your lines like a motherf---er so you can give the impression of spontaneity. That’s the gig.”
It must be said at this point that the sound of Bill Nighy calmly and politely uttering the word “motherf---er” makes it sound like the most beautiful word in the English language.
‘I’m always uneasy about the idea of me doing anything in a public context other than my job.’
Renowned for always wearing a suit, even on planes, Nighy does enjoy offering opinions on fashion in the podcast and is asked about everything from his idea of the perfect suit (a pleated trouser, generously cut, with a turn-up at the bottom; a two-button jacket “with only one vent at the back, nothing as vulgar as two”) to his opinion on brightly coloured socks (for the record, according to Nighy, there are only two permissible sock colours – navy blue and dark grey).
When one listener asked, “What kind of shorts should I wear?” Nighy’s answer began: “Ones that go all the way to your shoes.” Don’t get him started on linen suits and wearing shoes without socks.
Speaking of pet hates, there is an ongoing list of banned words that Nighy adds to each week. These include Chrimbo, champers and soft opening. When I suggest that “vinyls” should be added to the list, he admits he is unaware of this particular desecration of the English language but is delighted I’ve brought it to his attention.
“I’m now as appalled as you are,” he says. “I’m recording for the second season of the podcast tomorrow and I will ban it on your behalf, under your name. Consider it banned.”
He didn’t want to do a podcast. In fact, he turned down the idea three times before relenting. “There was a kind of inevitability about it that I resisted. I’m always uneasy about the idea of me doing anything in a public context other than my job. I like the idea of keeping my head down and going to work. But I eventually said yes.”
At the beginning of each episode he tells listeners that he will attempt to answer their questions without making things worse, and issues a warning about his own life: “I’m someone who got almost everything precisely wrong.” Does he really believe that?
“I do. I didn’t make decisions about how I wanted my life to be for the first 40 years or so. I didn’t give myself old-fashioned goals or seek my own counsel. I got up every morning and just made it up as I went along.
“Also, I allowed myself to accept bad news about myself from my head. I was very good at undermining myself and declaring myself inadequate. And it was all bullshit. There was nothing wrong with me. I should have addressed it but I didn’t.”
Although he has memorably inhabited roles as varied as rakish, washed-up rock singer Billy Mack in Love Actually, part-octopus/part-human Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and the decent, dignified dying man Rodney Williams in Living (for which he received a best actor Oscar nomination), Nighy never watches his own films. Why?
“I just can’t stand it,” he says. “The first time I ever watched myself on screen was when I was in a cop show called Softly, Softly [which ran from 1966 to 1969]. I played a character named Albert Blake and I was something like ‘fourth bank robber from the left’.
“I was living in a rooming house at the time and I made the mistake of saying, ‘Hey everybody, I’m on TV tonight!’ So we all sat down and watched it and it was absolutely dreadful. So I decided to never watch myself again, and my life is so much better for it. I keep trying to sell the idea to other actors.”
His nickname as a young man was Nervous, and there are people from his past who still call him Nerv. There are many things from his past that Nerv has let go. He gave up cigarettes more than 20 years ago (“I smoked like a maniac for most of my life and I regret every cigarette I’ve ever smoked”) and says he is “something like 1452 days off refined sugar”.
He is a voracious reader – there’s a raft of paparazzi photos on the internet of him reading at outdoor cafes – but he gives most books away after he’s finished with them. Some exceptions include two of his all-time favourite books: the four-novel collection Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway.
“I always assumed I wanted to live in a book-lined room but it turned out that’s not what I wanted at all,” he says. “The only books I keep are ones that have particular sentimental value or that have actual value. But I’m not a collector. In fact, yesterday in Hatchards in Piccadilly, at the till, like candy, they had a very handsome first edition of The First Forty-Nine Stories. I did ask the young lady if I could hold it, and I did hold it. I think it cost something like £1200 [$2260]. And I thought, well, I have £1200. But I just couldn’t justify it.”
In his teens he had ambitions of becoming a writer himself. His love of Hemingway and his discovery of Bob Dylan set him on a path to Paris.
“I was 15 when I bought Dylan’s first album. It has tracks on it like See That My Grave Is Kept Clean and Fixin’ to Die, these songs from a young man with a guitar and a harmonica, singing about death. I don’t know why it drove me nuts but it did. Something about it was intoxicating.
“So I left home on the strength of that album, along with a copy of Hemingway’s short stories. I mean, I’m a walking, talking cliche. I threw my suitcase out my bedroom window, and my friend who was coming with me was down there to catch it. I got to Paris and hung around [bookshop] Shakespeare and Company, hoping to catch literary fame and write sentences that would get me a girlfriend. Of course, I didn’t write a word, I didn’t get a girlfriend, and soon enough I went back home.”
He never checks a bag when travelling on planes, just a carry-on. He doesn’t own a computer or laptop, he abhors social media, he doesn’t do Zoom (“everyone always looks like they’re in a hostage situation”) and he recently “retired” from lunch. “Especially work meetings that involve lunch. It’s like a bomb in the middle of your day.”
One gets the sense that he’s someone who likes to leave a light mark on the world. And perhaps that fact, along with his frankness, self-deprecation and droll delivery, are all part of the comforting appeal of the podcast.
“I’ve never listened to a podcast, so I don’t know what the appeal of the show is, apart from the fact that people come up to me in the street to tell me they like it.
“Then again, for many years I have worked on BBC Radio 4 doing a show called A Charles Paris Mystery. And I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘I love hearing you on that show.’ And I say, ‘Well, thank you very much.’ And they say, ‘I have real trouble sleeping, then I put you on and I’m out like a light.’ So technically they’re saying my acting puts them to sleep. But I take it as a compliment. There must be something about my voice that makes people relax.”
The first season of Ill-Advised by Bill Nighy is available now. Episode one of the second season dropped – oh, sorry, that word is banned … was released on Thursday.
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