Big roles keep coming for Bill Nighy

By Robert W. Butler

The English actor owes his sudden success to ‘Love, Actually.’

For most of his working life, Bill Nighy has been a journeyman actor.

He was a familiar face and voice in his native England, where he worked regularly in theater, TV and radio.

But famous? Never.

And then, just five years ago, he was cast as a drunken boor of an aging rock star in director Richard Curtis’ “Love, Actually.” And suddenly, Bill Nighy was in demand.

“I owe Richard Curtis endless dinners,” Nighy said in a phone conversation from New York. He was publicizing his latest film, “Valkyrie.”

“Richard changed the way I work,” Nighy said. “‘Love, Actually’ gave me a profile in America, and it meant that I no longer had to sing for my supper. After that movie I was invited to go to work. That’s a big change in an actor’s life.

“Also a bit disorienting. I remember the first few times I went to auditions after ‘Love, Actually’ and things were not going right, and it took awhile to realize that they were trying to sell me on the job rather than the other way around.”

Despite his growing fame — thanks to roles in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series (he played Davy Jones from beneath a tangle of computer-generated tentacles), “Shaun of the Dead” (he was an ineffectual Brit who became a zombie) and “The Constant Gardener” (he was an amoral British diplomat) — Nighy, 59, says he still lives in fear of never getting another job.

“Recently an actor the same age as me came to my trailer and told me we’d probably work forever,” he said. “I nearly threw him out. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t take anything for granted.”

In “Valkyrie,” Nighy and Tom Cruise portray real-life German officers who plot to blow up Hitler with a suitcase bomb. Nighy said he greatly admired his character, Gen. Friedrich Olbricht.

“These men were in the midst of a country terrified into collective madness,” he said. “They were honorable military men ashamed that they had a commander in chief who was not only an incompetent corporal but also a lunatic.

“Olbricht was involved in the German resistance longer than almost anyone else. He risked his life every day for several years plotting schemes against Hitler. And then, when the moment of real action arrived, he faltered.”

The conspirators, Nighy said, could just as easily have sat tight. They knew they were losing the war and the Allies would eventually take care of Hitler.

“But because of the shame they felt at Hitler’s policies, they felt they had to act. It cost them their lives.”