Nighy

The inspirational true story of the Homeless World Cup – an international football tournament for homeless people founded in 2001 – would probably be better told as a documentary. Instead, it’s been turned into this well-meaning (and often well-acted) but sugary underdog sports drama where everyone’s the underdog, from screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and director Thea Sharrock, with composite fictional characters and storylines gleaned from interviews and research.It has an eccentric, not to say surreal bit of casting:…

‘Father and husband were his primary roles in life’Todd FieldImmense heart … with Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom. Photograph: Album/AlamyAnyone who had the great fortune to pretend with Tom Wilkinson will tell you his art was only surpassed by his immense heart. The reader may scoff at this statement, wise to a PR environment where everyone loves each other, but that is the truth. Of course, truth evaporates with the telling of it – and you can’t always get it back. But I will tell you this.Someone else was supposed to…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeBill Nighy has finally explained why he was carrying a little toy bunny on the Oscars red carpet on Sunday (12 March).The 73-year-old star made a point of directing photographers’ attention to the rabbit, which appeared to be from the Sylvanian Families range.Nighy, who was nominated in the Best Actor category for his role in Living, has now revealed that the curio was his…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeKazuo Ishiguro how a “eureka moment” in the back of a London taxi resulted in Oscar nominations.The author of books including Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go adapted Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese film Ikiru into a London-set drama titled Living, which was released in 2022.Ishiguro wrote the script, which has been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at this year’s Oscars, which…

When Mary Nighy was a young actor, an unhealthy number of scripts landed in her inbox featuring a character that went something like: “18-year-old-girl, naked, dead.” “Sexual abuse or violence is often just used as a plot device. It’s a catalyst for drama,” she says. “It doesn’t really tell you much about the experience of being abused. Or how you emerge from it.”Now, with her first feature film as a director, she has made a film that does exactly that: exploring what it might feel like to be trapped inside a coercive,…

At the end of an evening with friends, actor Bill Nighy and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro decided to share a taxi home, a simple yet fateful decision which in time led to the new movie “Living.” “I kind of said almost spontaneously, ‘Oh, Bill, I know this fantastic role for you that will win you all these awards,’” says Ishiguro, the 2017 Nobel laureate in literature, whose novels include “Klara and the Sun,” “Never Let Me Go,” and “The Remains of the Day.” “And my wife, Lorna, said immediately, ‘Stop bothering, Bill; he’s got…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeBill Nighy has predicted that a famous quote from the 2003 romcomLove Actuallywill be at the top of his obituary one day.In the hit Richard Curtis movie, Nighy played ageing rocker Billy Mack, who has a penchant for hard-partying, promiscuity and drugs.Speaking on ITV’s This Morning on Friday (11 November), Nighy reflected on the scene where Billy says to a TV camera: “Hiya kids. Here…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeDir: Oliver Hermanus. Starring: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke. 12A, 102 minutes.Ikiru, in its plaintive modernity, may not be the most widely recognisable of Akira Kurosawa’s films. It can’t be slotted so neatly beside the savage violence and heroic ideals of his historical films, Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957) or Ran (1985). But the 1952 drama’s…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeBill Nighy loves a good suit. Everyone knows that. It’s why there is little surprise in seeing him this afternoon sharply clad in a navy ensemble too dapper to be off-the-peg. It’s also why the actor’s sartorial style, already the topic of many an interview over the past two decades, comes low on the agenda of today’s conversation – and why then in our limited time, I can’t follow up…

The terrible conversation in the hospital consulting room – everyone’s final rite of passage – is the starting point for this deeply felt, beautifully acted movie from screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus: a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1953 film Ikiru, or To Live.A buttoned-up civil servant works joylessly in the town planning department; he is a lonely widower estranged from his grasping son and daughter-in-law. In the original, he was Mr Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura. Now he is Mr Williams,…