Bill Nighy on Bill Shakespeare

I am not much of a fan girl. When you work on the fringes of “the industry,” you get more than enough exposure to actors and personalities and celebrities and people famous because their sex tapes showed up on the web.  After a while, the glamor wears thin, especially if, as happened on my way home from DC last week, you get trapped in a seat in front of the struggling actor son of a famous character actor who did not shut up the entire flight—dropping names, mentioning people, being snarky.  (I actually was curious enough to look him up on IMDB and discovered he hadn’t even bothered to post a picture with his exceedingly spare resume.  And for whatever reason, he doesn’t use his famous father’s last name.)

But I digress.

I make exceptions to my no-fan policy from time to time, though, and one of those exceptions is for Bill Nighy.  Yes, I (heart) Bill Nighy.  I’ve always liked him as an actor—the scene in Love Actually when his has-been rocker character goes on a radio show and gleefully trashes Britney Spears, his own career, the record he’s promoting, and everything else in sight is not only my favorite scene in the movie, it’s one of my top-ten movie scenes ever. Some years ago I saw him on a Comic Con panel promoting one of the Underworld movies and he was just delightful—funny, self-deprecating, courtly.  People I know who have worked with him can’t say enough wonderful things about him and believe me, that’s pretty rare.

So I wondered—has Bill Nighy done any Shakespeare? It turns out that he hasn’t and he has some pretty funny things to say about why not. Here's a quote from vulture.com on on the typical Shakespeare costumes. 

Here's an interview from 2009 where he riffs even more hilariously on the topic.

I can't help but think what a fabulous King Lear Nighy would make.