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William Francis Nighy (; born 12 December 1949) is an English actor. Known for his work in several stage, television and film productions, he has received several awards including a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award, and also has had nominations for an Academy Award, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. He started his career with the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, and made his London debut with the Royal National Theatre starting with The Illuminatus! in 1977. He gained acclaim for his roles in David Hare's Pravda in 1985, Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1991, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1993, and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in 1994. He received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nomination for his role in Blue/Orange in 2001. He acted on Broadway in the David Hare plays The Vertical Hour (2006) and Skylight (2015), earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination for the latter. Nighy's early film roles include the comedies Still Crazy (1998), Guest House Paradiso (1999) and Blow Dry (2001). He rose to international stardom with his role in Love Actually (2003), which earned him a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to portray Viktor in the Underworld film series (2003–2009) and Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2006–2007). His other films include Shaun of the Dead (2004), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), The Constant Gardener (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Hot Fuzz (2007), Valkyrie (2008), Wild Target (2010), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), About Time (2013), Emma (2020), and Living (2022), the last of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Nighy has gained acclaim for his roles in television, earning a BAFTA Award for his role in BBC One series State of Play (2003), and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for the BBC film Gideon's Daughter (2007). He is also known for his roles in The Girl in the Café (2006) and the BBC's Worricker trilogy which include Page Eight (2012), Turks & Caicos (2014), and Salting the Battlefield (2014), and the BBC's Ordeal by Innocence (2018). Early life and education William Francis Nighy was born on 12 December 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, to Alfred Martin Nighy and Catherine Josephine, née Whittaker. His father managed a car garage after working in the family chimney sweeping business; his mother was a psychiatric nurse of Irish descent born in Glasgow, Scotland. Nighy was brought up as a Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy; however, he gave up "being a practising Catholic" as a teenager. He has two elder siblings, Martin and Anna. He attended the John Fisher School, a Roman Catholic grammar school in Purley, where he was nicknamed "Knucks" because of his hands, and was a member of the theatre group. As a child he was known by many to be insecure and shy; as a teenager he became an avid reader, particularly enjoying the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He left school at the age of 15, without qualifications, and later with a friend travelled to Paris hoping and failing "to write a novel". He worked variously in a local employment office and as a messenger for The Croydon Advertiser and The Field. He then applied for a place at RADA, but was rejected and instead enrolled at the Guildford School of Dance and Drama to train for the stage. Career 1969–1984: Early roles After working in various regional theatre productions during his early twenties in theatres such as the Cambridge Arts Theatre and Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, a friend of Nighy's suggested that he audition for the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. During his audition he asked to start again about five times, according to fellow actor Jonathan Pryce, who said that "either he was a very good actor, or a madman". During his time at the Everyman he worked alongside fellow actors Julie Walters and Pete Postlethwaite, and writers Ken Campbell and Willy Russell. He was also a member of the travelling theatre group Van Load, which included one of Nighy's most frequent collaborators, writer and director David Hare. Nighy made his London stage debut at the National Theatre in an epic staging of Ken Campbell and Chris Langham's Illuminatus!, after he met Campbell at a bar in London. When Nighy told him that he was an actor, Campbell hired him on the spot. It opened the new Cottesloe Theatre on 4 March 1977. He was cast in two David Hare premieres, A Map of The World and Pravda, also at the National. Nighy starred in three episodes of the British anthology series Play For Today from 1978 to 1982. He played Samwise Gamgee in the 1981 BBC Radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings (credited as William Nighy), and was heard in the 1980s BBC Radio version of Yes Minister. 1985–1999: National Theatre and acclaim After Nighy made his debut, he steadily gained acclaim with his performances in David Hare's Pravda in 1985, William Shakespeare's King Lear in 1986 and Anton Chekov's The Seagull in 1994. At the National Theatre, he acted in productions alongside Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench, Harriet Walter, Rufus Sewell and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Nighy's most acclaimed stage performances were in National Theatre productions. As Bernard Nightingale, an unscrupulous university don, in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (1993), he engaged in witty exchanges with Felicity Kendal, who played Hannah Jarvis, an author. Nighy played Jerry in Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1991 at the Almeida Theatre. He played a consultant psychiatrist in Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange (2000), for which he received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor. It transferred to the West End at the Duchess Theatre the following year. In 1997, he starred as restaurant entrepreneur Tom Sergeant in David Hare's Skylight, which had premiered in 1995 and was moved to the Vaudeville Theatre. He played a libidinous young disc jockey, Vincent Fish, in the 1980 comedy series Agony, where he was the occasional lover of the lead character, played by Maureen Lipman. He also starred in two episodes of the BBC series Performance in 1991 and 1993. One of Nighy's early major screen appearances was the BBC serial The Men's Room (1991). He claimed that the serial, an Ann Oakley novel adapted by Laura Lamson, was the job that launched his career. He received some recognition by American audiences for his acclaimed character portrayal of fifty-year-old rock star Ray Simms in the 1998 film Still Crazy. In 1999 he gained further prominence in the UK with the starring role in "The Photographer", an episode of the award-winning BBC-TV mockumentary comedy series People Like Us, playing Will Rushmore, a middle aged man who has abandoned his career and family in the deluded belief that he can achieve success as a commercial photographer. Since 1999, Nighy has played Simon Brett's fictional amateur sleuth Charles Paris at least 17 times on BBC Radio 4. 2000–2009: Career exp.... Discover the Cate Lawley popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Cate Lawley books.