The music isn't loud enough. And it's the wrong song. Bill Nighy - winner of this year's Editor's Special award - imposing in an immaculate tuxedo, extends an arm, his limbs long, awkward and graceful at the same time, like a Tim Burton creation. He strikes a pose. "For God's sake," he says, clicking his fingers. "Just put on something that swings." "I rely on music to get by," he tells GQ. "Since I discovered the shuffle facility on the 'pod there's a continuous soundtrack." What, specifically, swings? "Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye if you're being sociable. I left home on the strength of the first Bob Dylan album. I literally threw my suitcase out the window." After a long and successful career in the theatre that took him from Liverpool's avant-garde Everyman (alongside Jonathan Pryce) to the National, Nighy's commercial breakthrough was the character of ageing rocker Billy Mack in Richard Curtis' Love Actually, for which he won a BAFTA.
After that, the roles came tumbling - Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Sam Mendes' play The Vertical Hour, Notes On A Scandal and Valkyrie, and then Curtis' next project,
The Boat That Rocked. The 61-year-old is now one of the most bankable actors in the world. This year alone he has starred in three movies, while the next 12 months sees him work alongside Colin Farrell in the big-budget remake of Total Recall.
But life could have been so different. Turns out his acting career began almost on a whim. "I met a girl who was going to drama college, and she suggested I become an actor," he says. "She could have said astronaut. I would have given it a shot." GQ, for one, is very glad he did.
Bill Nighy's Man of the Year: "Christopher Walken, because he delivered a comic masterclass on Broadway and everything he says and does is poetic."
Originally published in the October 2011 edition of British GQ.
