Bill Nighy by Sue Blackhall

Author:Sue Blackhall [Blackhall, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784185176
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Sex, Sea-legs and Scandal

Bill’s next project was Gideon’s Daughter for the BBC which was shown on February 26th, 2006. It meant a reunion with Stephen Poliakoff and co-star Miranda Richardson, and saw him in the role of PR chief Gideon Warner, helping the government deal with the death of the Princess of Wales and prepare for the Millennium, while desperately trying to come to terms with his daughter slipping away from him. His character is eventually saved when he meets Stella (Richardson), who is coming to terms with the death of her own son.

Bill couldn’t wait to grab the part: ‘Oh man, the script was just great! I read and completely loved it. I picked up the phone immediately and said, “I’d like to be in this, please!” I had zero hesitation.’ He had empathy with his role because in some ways it mirrored his own situation. ‘Gideon is someone I feel I understand,’ he revealed. ‘He is a man who is finding it increasingly difficult to pay attention at work and yet the less he listens, the more successful he becomes. When you don’t care, people give you everything. If you can arrange not to want stuff, people hand it to you for free. That’s a great joke! Gideon has worked hard over the years and been very successful, but guess what? It didn’t work. Part of the human condition is that we all go around saying, “When I get that bit of my life straight, I can pull over and relax. If I can only get that person to love me or get that perfect pair of shoes, then I’ll be sorted. But guess what? You get the shoes and nothing changes. Now you can’t find the right handbag to go with it. When you’ve attained one thing, there is always something else tantalisingly dangling at the end of the stick that you need. That’s a universal experience.’

Gideon’s Daughter was a new departure for him. He was instructed by Poliakoff to cut back on his physical performance and concentrate on delivering the lines. The director asked Bill not to blink so much – in fact, not to move so much generally, as he usually does. Bill was a little bemused by this. He told aintitcool.com: ‘Part of it is that I think that if it’s just me turning up, then everyone will go to sleep, so I think I have to do something in order to earn my keep, you know what I mean? In other words, it’s born of certain insecurity, I suppose, about my general physical presence, that it’s not substantial enough on its own, which I’m working on, maybe for other roles. Steven put a stop to all of that – you know, this is not going to be any of the stuff that you’ve done… forget all the stuff you’ve done before. I want you to be very still, and it was challenging.

‘For the first couple of weeks, I kept having to go

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