Bill Nighy Is Making Up for Lost Time

The protagonist of Living—director Oliver Hermanus and novelist-screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro’s splendid reimagining of Ikiru, the 1953 film by Akira Kurosawa—is a man of steady habits. A lifelong civil servant, Mr. Williams takes the train into post-war London each morning for work, trailed by a fleet of young associates (all dressed in the same boxy suits and bowler hats that he is); he shuffles some papers at his desk; and then he heads home for a mostly silent supper with his son and daughter-in-law. It takes nothing short of a devastating diagnosis to unsettle that routine—but even then, after learning that he has about six months to live, Williams wouldn’t dream of doing anything so drastic as ending his own life. (As he tells a friendly stranger, he is loath to inconvenience the landlady.) Instead, the shadow of death wakes him up. Determined to make something useful of his final days, he endeavors to really get down to work—finally emerging as a man not ruined by his crisis, but redeemed by it. 

Williams is played with touching reserve by Bill Nighy, a man with vim in abundance. While he has often poked holes in the self-seriousness (and self-flagellation) of Method acting—“I can’t be feeling stuff” while working, he’s said. “That I do in my own time”—anyone who has seen him in a David Hare play (The Vertical Hour, Skylight) or flap his arms as a strung-out rock star in Love Actually knows he doesn’t lack for commitment. Hermanus calls Nighy “extraordinary,” an actor who manages to “find that place of truth in every given moment in front of the camera,” while Ishiguro says that Nighy was “integral” to getting Living off the ground. “He has that English sense of humor, that ironic sense, a stoicism, and a kind of melancholy behind the surface. And he looked to me like all those men on the railway platforms.”

If he had the right look for a mid-century bureaucrat, Nighy is a contrast to Williams in several (hundred) other ways. For one thing, he’s as devoted to his work as he is to his pleasures: Sure, he has long been strictly sugar-free, but he loves coffee, dancing, beautiful clothes, and he wields a painfully cool taste in music. When I tell him that I’d tracked down Jackie Gleason’s lush arrangement of “Yesterdays”—a 1933 standard by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach—after hearing it in Living, Nighy misunderstands (he doesn’t watch his own movies, after all) and eagerly recommends a gorgeous, croon-y cover of the Beatles song “Yesterday” by Ray Charles. 

Ahead of Living’s theatrical release this Friday, Nighy recently spoke to Vogue about diners, bookshops, musicals, radio, and the (not unwelcome) awards attention that’s attached itself to the film.

Vogue: How long are you in New York?

Bill Nighy: I’m only here until Thursday, and then I fly home late Thursday night back to London.

Do you have any favorite haunts or things to do when you’re in town, and you have the time? 

Well, it occurred to me the other day that, apart from London, New York is the place I’ve spent the most time. I’ve done a couple of plays on Broadway, so I’ve lived here properly for months. And I love New York. I love all the diners, and I love the bookshops, although they’re thinner on the ground than they used to be, which is always a shame. I love to wander around. It’s a wonderful atmosphere, especially around this time of year. The first time I ever came to New York, I was so excited. It was like being in a movie, with the fire hydrants, the policemen, everything I’d been watching since I was a kid, you know? And the big tree at Rockefeller Center and people skating and all that kind of stuff—they really take Christmas for real here.

Yes, it’s very jolly now. Do you try to go to shows when you’re here, or not really?

I’ve either been here doing a show—which kind of disqualifies you, because you do eight shows a week and on your day off, you’re not gonna go see a show—or else I’ve been in this situation where it’s a quick hit, you’re working all the time, and therefore there’s not a lot of chance. But I love to go to shows. I’ve discovered musicals quite late in life, really, and I’ve been going to a few of them in England, which have been really satisfying. I never used to go to musicals—I don’t know why, I just had no tradition of doing it. But I’m gonna go and see Hugh Jackman in The Music Man tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that.

What musicals have you seen recently and liked?

I saw the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, and then there’s a Gershwin musical called Crazy for You. They were both English productions, but they were brilliant. I love the dancing above all. I’m just so impressed when people can dance to that level, you know? I like to dance alone in my room, and I throw a few shapes, but when you see professional dancers, I find it incredibly moving. The fact that they’ve spent so much time, and it’s so grueling and hard and their professional life is so short, as is the actual performance…I find it kind of heroic. I think it’s marvelous.

I understand that you made a point of inviting the restaurant cook who made your breakfast when you were doing Skylight to the Vogue screening the other day. Did I get that right?

That’s correct. I used to go to a particular diner every morning for my breakfast, ’cause I never cook or anything. My fridge contains only water and a pint of milk; anything else makes me really uneasy. I love cafes. As much as I like anything in the whole of the human experience, I like bookshops and I like cafes. So Kathy came, and a few other people that I’d met over the years in New York came. I don’t really know a lot of people in New York, or even in London. People say, “Who do you want to invite?” And I never know who to say. I’m not comfortable with the idea of personally saying, “Hey, I’m in a movie, why don’t you come see it?” That’s not my speed. That’s why I can’t post on Instagram or anything.

It’s embarrassing, I imagine.

Yeah, it’s just sort of embarrassing. 

I’m curious as to how this press cycle is treating you, then, and especially the awards chatter. Are you finding that gratifying? Uncomfortable?

I mean, promoting a film is pretty…you always go through the same kind of process. I’m never gonna be moaning about it. It’s not the worst thing that ever happened to anybody. And the other stuff…I don’t read anything about myself. I don’t read anything that anybody else says about myself. So I try and focus on the day I’m in. But anything that promotes the movie is a marvelous development. For a British or any independent movie, the only way forward is awards, really, because we don’t have a huge publicity budget or anything of that kind. So the only way that people will ever get to hear about them is if they are at least mentioned in dispatches in terms of awards. So any of that is very, very welcome.

Since you don’t watch yourself, do you just have a sense, in your body, of when a performance is working? Is it kind of a feel thing?

Yeah, it’s a feel thing. It’s exactly that. You kind of know. Sometimes you don’t get that feeling and you just have to keep going anyway, and that’s a pretty lonely place to find yourself in. And that’s not uncommon—in quite a lot of jobs, I don’t really get the feeling, and yet obviously I have to go to work. And some of those are very, very well received; the audience or the critics apparently think they’re great, so what do I know? But I do get a really distinct feeling. And it’s exciting because then you get really interested. You can just plug into that.

How are you picking roles these days? Are you looking for anything? And how has that changed over the years?

I mean, when I first started, I pretty much took any job that came because I had to. And then you make a little money and you can wait a little time. But any actor who’s as fortunate as I am, you easily turn down 10 times as much as you actually do. At the moment, I’m an old hand and I’ve been around for a long time, and traditionally my generation of British actors just sits around and waits for the phone to ring and people to say, “Do you wanna come do this thing?” And you go, “Yeah!” or “No.” Whereas now, I am trying to be a bit more 21st-century about it, a bit more modern, and get in at the beginning of things and generate things and make suggestions. It’s a little late in the day—I could have done that a long time ago—but as the film discusses, I’m a great procrastinator.

This is a different sort of gig, but I listened to your hosting stint on Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour last month. How did that come along? You have a great radio voice.

The legendary Ciara Parkes, who is my publicist, she has been very keen on my DJ capabilities. She has for a long time promoted the idea of me as a DJ, and finally it bore fruit and they listened to her and put me on [BBC’s] Radio 6. And the big news is—hey, everybody—that I’ve been asked back.

Oh! That’s huge.

I was quite nervous and I obviously obsessed about the tunes. It drove me insane. It’s like, what about that? What about that? Then you think, oh, I’m only choosing that because that’ll make me look…whatever. You know? And you think, no, choose it ’cause it swings. Choose it because it’s a groove.

It really had a good mix of styles and periods.

I was gonna coin this phrase, but I resisted it ’cause it sounded pompous. But you know, music now exists outside of time, because young kids or older people can listen to anything, all the time. You don’t have to worry about when it was released, because it’s on your phone and it just came up, so you might as well listen to it, you know? So, I was thinking along those terms. And I Shazam a lot in stores or restaurants, and quite a few tunes come out of that. 

Of course, you’ve played rockers in films in the past, but has the opportunity to do an actual musical ever come your way? And if it did, would you want to try that?

When you do a play, it’s so grueling doing eight shows a week, it’s such hard work, but if you want to make yourself feel better, it’s infinitely worse to be doing a musical. But I wouldn’t mind doing a certain kind of musical. I’m not that confident singing, but I can hold a tune, and I love singing. I love people singing. I listen to great singers—Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight—all kinds of apparently effortless geniuses. I’m thrilled by that stuff. I’m more of a bathroom singer, but if they could design a musical that included me, I think I’d be happy.

I’m sure people would love it. Living is, in part, about Mr. Williams finally completing a Public Works project that he’d been putting off. Is there a sort of white whale in your own career? Anything that you’ve always wanted to do but never quite had the chance to, or maybe the timing wasn’t right?

I’ve never had goals. I always knew you were supposed to have goals, but I was always going to decide on that tomorrow, and tomorrow never came. But I’ve never had roles that I burned to play or anything like that. The white whale in my life is writing. My heroes were all writers—writers and musicians. Even now, I watch films and I go to the theater, and I love those things, but the things that are my primary enthusiasms are reading fiction and listening to music. The other white whale would be singing, actually. But I don’t mean that in a public way—I don’t fancy standing in front of an audience. But I wouldn’t mind being in a recording studio. [But with writing], I mean, my whole career could be seen as just one long exercise in displacement activity, because I couldn’t sit in a room with a blank piece of paper.

Your daughter Mary’s directorial debut, Alice, Darling, is also out this month, and it got amazing reviews in Toronto. You must be so excited for her.

I’m very, very excited about that and very, very proud on her behalf. It was marvelous that it got into the Toronto Film Festival, and I was there at the same time. I was able to go to her screening and it was an actual triumph. The audience cheered and stomped and clapped, and the reviews, as you say, were raves. I couldn’t be more pleased. That’s the big news around our way. I hope lots of people go see it.

Early on, were you distressed at all about her interest in following her parents into acting? Or were you pleased?

I think I was initially like anyone with any sense. I wasn’t negative, but I wasn’t actively encouraging, either, when she was little. Then I had a philosophical moment, sitting in the wings, doing a play one time. The light was streaming through, and I’d been getting laughs, and I was waiting to go back on. I was in a good coat and a decent suit and the play had been well received. I got romantic about it, and I was thinking, Why are you to any degree negative when your daughter asks about this? Why would you do that? What are you trying to protect her from? So I go to her and say, “I think I’ve made a mistake. If that’s the area you want to go into, let’s go for it.” I think I did make—not an apology, but I restarted that conversation.

Do you have any desire to work on something together? Or have you talked about that?

Yeah, there is a script. There is a part and we’ll see if we can get it made. I’d be very, very confident working with her. She’s, as I say, a real talent and she’s got real humanity and real intelligence. That would be something—and I will do exactly as I’m told.

And because I feel it behooves me to ask a fashion question: What do you look for in a suit? And where do you find them?

Well, I was walking down Bond Street in London just before COVID, and a young man was walking towards me with a young woman, and he looked like Ronald Colman on a yacht in 1922. He looked absolutely impeccable. I find I get very excited about clothes. If I see a woman, for instance—I mean, you have to be careful—but if there’s a certain level of chic, I just have to say something. So I stood in front of this young man, and I said, “Can I just say, you look absolutely marvelous.” And his girlfriend immediately said, “He made everything he’s wearing.”

Wow.

And I said, “Well, maybe we should have a cup of coffee.” And that turned out to be the glamorously named Buzz Tang. He has a label called The Anthology. And there is a very exciting young designer in London called Scott Fraser Simpson, who I’ve worked with a great deal. I’ve worked on film costumes with him as well as on personal clothes. And there’s also a bunch of inspired young Australians called P Johnson, and they have an algorithm where they take measurements that no one else has ever taken in the history of tailoring. And they come up and they really can make a beautiful shape. And they’re not obscenely expensive. So those three people are all young designers.

The costumes in Living were so glamorously mid-century. Did you enjoy working with [costume designer] Sandy Powell on them?

You know, many people are described as legends and geniuses these days. She’s both, and she is absolutely wonderful to work with. It also means I don’t have to struggle, because if Sandy Powell says wear that, I just wear that. In this film, she found a vintage suit which I think is probably older than me—probably 100 years old. It was of the period and a beautiful thing. I wanted the shoulders in, ’cause I always think I have a scrawny neck and a small head, so I want the shoulders to be very soft and quite narrow. But she said, “No, everyone in 1953 had those big shoulders.” If that was any other costume designer, I’d probably struggle with that and try to argue. But when Sandy Powell says it, you go, “Yes, Ms. Powell.”

This conversation has been edited and condensed. Living is in limited theaters on December 23.