The go-to chap for playing urbane Englishmen with a hint of neurosis, who starred in films such as Love Actually and Harry Potter, is happier in a corner café than an exotic location
Where have you just come back from?
Yorkshire, which was extremely beautiful. I was filming for Dad's Army in Beverley, Bridlington, Scarborough, Whitby - that coast and those beaches are sensational. I'm crazy about Yorkshire - it ought to be independent.
Where have you felt happiest?
I've had two ecstatic times in New York. The first time I went, it was Christmas and I arrived at night and it really was like being in the movies. I was put up in the Waldorf, in the only smoking room left in America, in the days when I would smoke cigars. There aren't many times when you feel uncomplicatedly happy, like nothing's-wrong-happy, but I did. And the other time was after I'd opened a play on Broadway, which is an alarming process. The night after we'd opened, it dawned on me that we'd done it. I was in the car with my driver, Andrew, and Barry White came on the radio. Previously I'd had no relationship with Barry White but I said to Andrew, 'Turn that motherfucker up, and let's go to Brooklyn for dessert.' We drove through New York with our arms aloft to Barry White. I remember thinking, 'Just let this last.' It was relief. I had come out of a form of shock to a blissful awareness that I didn't have to be scared any more.
Which is your favourite city, and why?
London is a great city - I love it more and more. There are so many districts and so much variety. I love it mostly at night; I particularly love it by the river. I don't mind the rain, that just helps. Weather is probably one of my greatest enthusiasms.
Describe your favourite view
If you sit on the first-floor balcony of The Lalit hotel in Udaipur and look out over the lake to the mountains, with your book and your music, then that is a very good situation to be in. I did a lot of that when we were filming The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I spent long uncomplicated days in which the only struggle was what to have for breakfast, which book to read, which playlist to put on. It was just dreamy.
Where did you go on your first holiday on your own?
Cornwall, near St Ives, with nine other boys. I come from a small town and we all used to use one pub. At some point, the weather would change on a Saturday night and someone would say, 'Cornwall.' We used to have a Dormobile, which we joint-owned, and we would take it down there overnight. We would stay in this farmer's barn, with sleeping bags, if we'd remembered, and do odd jobs. He had a beautiful Gaggia coffee machine, which was the first I'd seen, and we used to sit underneath it in worship. Outside the barn there was a cold tap, and splashing your face in icy, cold water from the tap, with the sunlight just beginning to hit the cold stones - those were ecstatic moments. You'd just think, the future holds nothing but promise and all my anxieties from the night before, the paranoia induced by scrumpy and other things, have gone out the window.
Tell us about a great little place you know
Berkeley Square in London. I'm crazy about plane trees, and not only in London; in Melbourne too, which is a city I enjoyed very much. I like those secret patches of green you find in cities. I love Paris for that reason. Battersea Park is a wonderful spot, in the evening particularly, and Albert Bridge is very beautiful. I love being under a bridge with a cup of coffee.
Which is the smartest hotel you've ever stayed in?
I get institutionalised in places very quickly - I want to stay in the same hotel, preferably in the same room, and sit in the same chair I sat in before, reading the New York Times. I stay in The Carlyle in New York, L'Ermitage in Los Angeles and, in Paris, at Le Bristol. All three are very, very satisfying. In Paris I sometimes stay in a little hotel called Le Citizen, depending on who's paying. I once stayed a couple of nights in the Coco Chanel suite at the Ritz Paris. My daughter came, she was about 14, and she screamed as she walked in. There were lots of things you didn't know you liked until you got there: shuttered windows, huge soft sofas, electric chandeliers, and a large bath with gold eagles on the taps. The bed was like Wembley Stadium, and I also took a great fancy to the smoked mirrors, because everyone looks good in them.
Sightseeing or sun lounger?
When I go to hot places, where it's the same every time you open the curtains, I get kind of uneasy. As an Anglo-sort-of-Irish person, the heat doesn't suit me. I really don't understand people who travel long distances to the sun. I don't see which part of it is pleasurable. It hurts when it hits your skin, you then have to apply unguents, which make you uncomfortable, and you might go the colour of embarrassment. They're usually quite unremarkable places except that they've got sunshine. I don't get it.
Who is the most interesting person you've met on your travels?
Irving Penn. He took my photograph in New York for Vogue. Any PR impulse you had going - which is a polite way of saying bullshit - dissipated as soon as you met him. You knew that none of that was going to hang. If he asked you something simple like, 'How are you?', you weren't going to try to sell him the usual stuff, you were going to attempt the truth. He was just funny, deadly serious, but very funny, and he made you want to cry or put your head in his lap.
How do you relax?
I listen to music. I occasionally rock it up, but mostly it's the blues. And I read, and I might saunter somewhere, usually to get coffee. That's everything I like. That and bookshops. When we're filming and the cast come round to say, 'We're off to go water-skiing/look at the Grand Canyon/Taj Mahal,' I say, 'I'll catch you later, I'll be in the café on the corner.' Cafés are my favourite thing in the world. I navigate by them. As a phenomenon, they are beautiful and essential.
Bill Nighy stars in 'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', out in cinemas now
This feature first appeared in Condé Nast Traveller May 2015
