Bill Nighy quotes:

One of my great regrets, and I don't have many, is that I spent too long putting people's status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities. I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone's name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff.

I'm not a financial expert. The Robin Hood tax seems to me a very simple and beautiful idea. I don't see the problem.

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.

I don't seem to be able to learn from experience or anything useful. History doesn't help me. Precedents don't inform my experience.

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I'd meet beautiful women in the rain.

The phenomenon of vampires has always appealed to me. Everyone kind of likes a vampire story because it almost could be true.

I'm not famous for my back story investigations; I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

I've worked with Len Wiseman before, on the 'Underworld' series, in which I was a vampire. The first two of those were his first two films. And I admire him beyond measure. I think he's tremendous, as a man and as a director.

I like being in kids' movies, and I like being in family movies.

I know really, really famous people who are terrified every time they walk on to a stage.

You get older and you see yourself and say, 'God, he's old, who's that?'

Never go anywhere you have to wear brown shoes.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

When you've been going on about something for a while, it is always satisfying to discover that other people agree with you.

It's probably healthier to find fame later in life.

I like American black soul music, that was my first big enthusiasm.

I generally do things I'm proud to be in and generally I'm in things people like.

I never mind doing press; it's never bothered me.

When you have a family, or even when you're just seeing a girl, it's difficult to be skint.

More people saw me in 'Love Actually' than had seen me in everything else I had ever done up to that point.

In life, if you have an enthusiasm for what they call 'good manners,' sometimes people don't quite believe you. I've had that once or twice before, where they assume you can't be for real.

If I'm going to appear in front of people I like to look my best.

I never watch my own films.

I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.

The great thing about animation is it's like the radio. I used to do lots of radio when I was a kid, and you get to play parts you would never get to play ordinarily.

To be serious, the things you really want to relive are things like bedtime with your daughter when she becomes incredibly entertaining 'cause she doesn't want to go to sleep. They're at their most enchanting 'cause they just want to put it off, so they do a cabaret for you. You sit there thinking, "Please don't let this end."

In the street, people talk to you about all kinds of things, but by far, the most number of people talk to me about Love, Actually.

As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I'm greedy for beauty.

When it comes to casual clothing, my enthusiasm for clothes starts to waver.

I'm probably the only person who actually remembers pirate radio.

With stage, you feel completely like you're just in a bubble. I love not being able to see anything. I love coming out and I can't see anything because the lights are so bright and it's pitch black. That's ideal for me, that's when I have the best time.

I used to think that prizes were damaging and divisive, until I got one. And now they seem sort of meaningful and real.

I'm a jacket man. And if I'm without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don't know how to operate in shirt sleeves.

I have a perfectly average skewed perception of myself. We often don't know what we're like.

One of the great regrets of my life is that I smoked. If I could say anything to anybody starting out in life it would be, 'Whatever you do, don't smoke'. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.

I have nothing against romanticism. I'm all for it. I'm helpless in the face of romance.

It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world.

Standing in front of a fake mountain with fake snow falling and seven girls dressed as Santarettes will stay in my memory.

I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they'd arrest you for crimes against acting.

I would like to change everything, but obviously not everything. I've been incredibly fortunate. I guess everybody would do this, but I'd go back to my younger self and say, "Lighten up. Take it easy. Relax. Don't be so anxious about everything. Try to be in the day. Try to not have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow."

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It's almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.

If I ruled the world, every woman would have a Chanel suit in her wardrobe.

I'm one of those weird people who doesn't even own a computer.

If you are supposed to be villainous and have some sort of agenda, I like the idea of delivering that kind of character in a perfectly well-mannered way.

It can't be overstated how wonderful it is not to have to audition any more. Any actor will tell you, it's like Christmas.

Emma Watson is adorable in the extreme. She is such a lovely person.

When I do a play, it's like agreeing to be ill for a couple of months.

I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke.

There are only three men in the world who are licensed to wear shorts: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise.

Jerry Bruckheimer says that he makes films that he would want to see, and it seems that that coincides with what a lot of people want to see.

My dad had a personal style which was very attractive. It was quite reserved and quite elegant, and it was infectious.

Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.

I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.

I speed up past mirrors.

One of the things that is assumed about actors is that they are extrovert, which is almost never the case, in my experience.

There is something, yeah, I mean traditionally it's more fun to play bad guys than it is good guys and when you're playing a bad guy, yeah, the fun in it is to see how scary you can be, how horrible you can be. And it's surprising what you come up with.

I was never a hippy, per se.

I like sci-fi.

I don't spend a lot of time with anybody.

When a movie is called 'searingly honest,' it's almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get.

The degree of notoriety I have is fine and easy. There's nothing hysterical about it.

If you ever see me in a social setting wearing any sort of sportswear, then you know I'm in crisis.

I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn't operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it's actually also true - if I want to appear in public I want to look my best. If I'm onstage I like to do contemporary work, largely because of the trousers, because of the clothes. I like a decent, what we used to call a lounge suit. Then I can start to motor.

I love imaginative representations of a possible near-future, where you look at the technology and you think, "Well, yeah, that could really nearly be true." I like those kinds of backgrounds.

I find it hard to relax around any man who's got the second button on his shirt undone.

I'm lucky that I get to play a wide variety of parts.

I do think 3D has seriously improved, since I was a boy. It's fabulous.

When people warned me there would be long periods out of work if I became an actor, I couldn't keep a straight face because that was exactly what I had in mind.

I have never owned a computer. I am one of those weirdos. I've never needed a computer. I'm lucky that I have a job where I'm not required to use one.

I never go on the net or the web, or whatever it's called.

One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.

I'm not a World War II buff. I know a little bit about it, I was taught the other side of the story in school, so it was unfamiliar to me, the idea of a German resistance, and yet it was considerable.

I got briefly mistaken for someone who might be good in bed, which was very, very good.

Somebody asked me recently, 'Have you done a lot of plays?' I thought hang on. I used to do nothing but plays. I've been very fortunate that on several occasions I've had jobs where I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world whatever you had to offer - however much money you've got.

The job is the same - to attempt to make it sound like you've never said it before and as if it's just occurred to you. And that's the same whether you're on camera or whether you're on stage in a room full of people.

You can ruin your life wanting to be an actor.

I'm just aware of what I'm thinking and feeling but I do obviously have to get that to the back of the auditorium. So there are things like projection and filling the room, and not dropping the ends of lines - technical things which are important, but I don't think they change the way I feel in a scene.

When you are in something that you're proud of and it's funny and it's a good night out and all of those things, there's nothing quite like it. The rewards are proportionate to the amount of alarm and distress it causes you.

Actors always talk about taking their work home and I always think: 'What are you on? You just turn it off. You are at work and then you go home.'

I don't dislike the process of animation... I find it daunting, but only as much as I find everything daunting.

Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth. If you imagine yourself having to spend two and a bit hours cooking bolognaise, remembering a whole major work by David Hare and speaking it at the correct moment between chopping carrots and stirring the onions in front of an audience - the normal human response is 'Please, can I go to the airport?'

All actors who have been around for a long time, which I have, and have been skint for long periods, which I have, find it difficult to turn down jobs. If I turn anything down my stomach turns over. I feel sick. It feels like gambling.

I hardly even leave my own house.

I did actually sit down with a blank sheet of paper once. I think the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.

I'm always happy when actors get rich, because the odds on it are so long!

I admire David Hare as much as I admire certainly any writer ever. What I like about his writing is it is very conscientiously, in one way, an attempt to reproduce the way people actually speak, but it's not just an attempt at naturalism. It's stylised and it's heightened, to great effect. It's elegant and it's funny and that's the way to my heart, frankly.

One of the reasons I like a suit is because I've never been that keen on my body. The shape a suit presents is always going to be better than anything I can do.

I quoted David Hare one of his lines the other day to illuminate whatever point we were trying to make in the conversation, and I said 'What play was that?' and he said 'It was your line, you said it about a hundred and fifty times in The Vertical Hour.'

I'm not an actor who consciously accesses bits of my life, in order to play parts. Obviously, you don't need to have been a father to play one, otherwise everyone who's been a father would be able to act.

I don't normally watch films I'm in because I'm squeamish about that and it takes me quite a long time to recover and I have to go to work. I'm not being coy or cute, but it's just true.

I don't even own a car.

I don't want to associate myself with any specific group of politicians.

I'm not a royal family watcher.

I'm not good at watching myself which I think is perfectly natural. I don't give myself a hard time about it. I am the worst critic.

You have all these plans to act, and maybe do it rather elegantly, and then they turn the rain machine on.

I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up.

I've always slightly worried the kids who play football around my house. They know I'm an actor, but felt sorry for me because they'd never seen anything I've done.

I am a fan of rehearsal. I like doing it [scene] over and over and over and over until it looks like you never did it before.

From my point of view, it's very refreshing to play a regular human being and not someone from another dimension. When I say "not act," what I mean is just to be as natural and as normal as possible.

I have no memory, any at all, of actually performing the play, no recall in terms of the lines. I can't tell you any line from any play I've ever done.

I really have no interest in delivering the iambic pentameter, I just want to kill myself. I don't mind other people doing it. I say that, but really I don't want to watch other people doing it. I get embarrassed.

Often in America people would assume that [as an English actor] you've had some sort of deep, classical training, or that you're a Shakespeare enthusiast. I have zero interest in me performing Shakespeare.

If you ask any actor "What single thing would make you really, really happy?" Among the top five things they'd say is not having to audition anymore.

You tell yourself that you're not auditioning but of course you work like crazy, and you prepare like mad. And you think, "Well, I won't get that job. But maybe they'll have another job sometime, and they'll remember that I was good."

Anti-Semitism and Fascism have a long, mysterious, bewildering, poisonous and vile history and it's not exclusive to the Germans.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It's a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.