Bill Nighy: I stole complete works of Shakespeare to help me get into drama school

Bill Nighy once stole the complete works of William Shakespeare from a library to help him get into drama school – but says he now refuses to perform the playwright’s work onstage.

The Love Actually actor said he took the books after applying to the Guildford School of Acting to impress a girl. Given an audition, he had to prepare two pieces – one from a modern playwright and the other from Shakespeare.

He and an older friend “stole the complete works of Shakespeare, and we stole the complete works of George Bernard Shaw which we thought was sort of modern”, Nighy told BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life. “We could have borrowed it like everybody else, but for some reason, we were sort of developing a criminal mentality.”

However, despite the playwright’s influence on his burgeoning career, Nighy said: “I retired from Shakespeare sometime after that … I just thought: I can’t go through this any more because I don’t have any particular interest in the delivery of Shakespeare. I understand he’s the greatest poet the world has ever known, but the performance of it, I will leave to other people.”

Preparing for the audition, he inadvertently learned two female parts while “down the pub” with his friend, he said. He performed the role of Eliza Doolittle from Shaw’s play Pygmalion, and the part of Cesario in Twelfth Night.

Despite the panel looking “a bit confused” by his interpretation of the brief, Nighy said he was invited back “with more suitable material” and he was later accepted into the drama school.

Nighy said the girl he was trying to impress had originally written the letter to the drama school to gain an audition. “She could have said astronaut and I would have given it a shot,” he said.

During his career – besides his Oscar nomination last year for his role in Living, he has also won two Baftas and a Golden Globe – Nighy has performed two Shakespeare plays professionally: The Taming of the Shrew at the Gateway theatre in Chester, and King Lear with Anthony Hopkins at the National Theatre in London.

Nighy has spoken in the past about avoiding period drama because of the costumes and the type of acting he believes they come with. “Everybody starts standing in a certain way and talking in a certain way,” he says. “It’s the same with Shakespeare, or Chekhov. Or Harold Pinter: everyone’s got a weird voice. It’s odd how that style is handed down. I don’t think it’s even spoken about. And it’s very hard to resist. I mean, I’m not immune,” he told the Observer in 2020.

In a 2009 interview with the Guardian, he said: “The absence of classical work in my repertoire is due to the fact I can’t wear those trousers. It makes me sound very shallow but I’ve done some really serious plays in a decent lounge suit.”