Bill Nighy

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Date of Birth : Dec 12th 1949

Golden Globe and BAFTA-award winning English actor. He started working in theatre and television, before his first cinema role in 1981. He is perhaps best known to American film audiences for his roles in Love Actually, Underworld, Shaun of the Dead and Pirates of the Caribbean.

William Francis Nighy, the youngest of three children, was born in Caterham, Surrey, England to Catherine Josephine Whittaker, a psychiatric nurse, and Alfred Martin Nighy, who managed a car garage and worked as a mechanic. He has two siblings, Martin and Anna. Nighy attended the John Fisher School in Purley. He trained at the Guildford School of Acting, formerly known as The Guildford School of Dance and Drama.

After two seasons at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, Nighy made his London stage debut at the National Theatre in an epic staging of Ken Campbell and Chris Langham’s Illuminatus!, which opened the new Cottesloe Theatre on 4th March 1977, and went on to appear in two David Hare premieres, also at the National.

Nighy’s two most acclaimed stage performances were in National Theatre productions. Taking the leading male role in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993), he played an unscrupulous university don in witty exchanges with Felicity Kendal, his famous ironic ‘snicker’ much in evidence; and he gave a virtuoso performance as a consultant psychiatrist in Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange (2000), for which he won an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor, and which transferred to the West End at the Duchess Theatre the following year.