Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I die, the words ‘Hey, kids, don’t ugs’ will be on my tombstone
s Emma’s father, Mr Woodhouse – is lable on TV from this week ut acting was not Nighy’s first love. wing up in South London (he is a ong Crystal Palace supporter) he inally wanted to be a journalist. flunked school because I was ing out the window and dreaming eing F. Scott Fitzgerald,” he smiles. “I t to my local newspaper asking for b and the editor said I needed five O els – but I didn’t have any. o I ran away to Paris to NOT write great English novel instead. I’d read est Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, es Joyce and everyone who had been aris in 1922. But I didn’t have any s so ended up begging on the streets he Trocadero for a while. tried to write. I sat down with a k piece of paper at one point and I te a title... and then the doorbell went and that was the end of my literary career. I still have to remind myself that I do actually have a literary agent.
“She’s a friend of mine and she said ‘It doesn’t matter if you never write anything.’ I occasionally see her in the street because she works near me, and I say, ‘I haven’t written anything,’ and she says ‘It’s OK you don’t have to.’
“Peter Cook wrote a cartoon once and it was two guys in a bar, and one guy says ‘I’m writing a novel’ and the other guy says, ‘Neither am I.’ Which sort of sums up my literary career.”
Instead he found a creative outlet on stage, working at the famous Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. He also helped found Van Load, a travelling theatre group. From there he went to the London stage and into films.
However, by the early 1990s his drink and drug habits began to affect his career and personal life. He quit and has been “a sober alcoholic” since May 1992.
He rarely talks about it, but once said: “The central fact of my life is that I have an unhealthy relationship with moodaltering chemicals, liquid or otherwise.
“The most significant thing that ever happened to me was when I stopped. I take it very seriously, I’m very grateful I no longer have to do any of that.”
Bill has lived alone since his 27-year relationship with actress Diana Quick ended in 2008. The only woman in his life now is their daughter Mary, 35. As an actor he is always in demand and has starred in films including Shaun of the Dead, Underworld, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Dad’s Army. He has also continued to return to the stage, starring with Carey Mulligan in David Hare’s Skylight in the West End and later on Broadway. But what about the unwritten book? “I can procrastinate at an Olympic level,” he says. “I’ve been not-writing since I was 16 years old.
“Maybe if I get to be very old, I’ll sit down at some point and do it. But my great regret is that I didn’t keep a journal.
“So if I have any REAL advice for kids then it’s ‘Don’t ever smoke a cigarette. And always write a journal’.”