Interview Kazuo Ishiguro: "Probably today Salman Rushdie would have been canceled for writing 'Satanic Verses'"
Oscar Awards 2023 Oscar Awards Nominations
Bill Nighy (Caterham, Surrey, England, 1949)
belongs to the select club of lives in which all possible lives fit.
As funny as he appears in
Love Actually
or as serious as he looks right now in
Living
, this actor who grew up on the most select stages at the hands of Shakespeare, Pinter or Stoppard has been capable of anything.
And he still is.
His work in the film written by Kazuo Ishiguro and directed by Oliver Hermanus on Akira Kurosawa's 1952 classic has earned him his first Oscar nomination at the age of 73.
In Spain he worked with Isabel Coixet on
La librería
And from that film he keeps, at least, two treasures: "Six bottles of oil made by Isabel herself and a Barça shirt with my name written on the back."
Ishiguro, the film's screenwriter, commented at the time that the first impulse to recover Kurosawa's tape was nostalgia for a time when things made sense.
He was referring to the old values of the British Empire... It's hard for me to reason in those terms.
Feeling nostalgic for an empire as brutal as the British was even seems immoral to me.
I think we still have a lot to regret as Brits and the sooner we face our past the better.
People tend to feel nostalgic for what they have not experienced, for what they have seen in the movies or for what the common imagination has built.
But that's not real.
I am thinking, for example, of the Second World War.
How can you long for a time like this when it was impossible to know if you were going to live the next day or what part of the city was going to be completely destroyed?
What do we long for when we say we long for the past?
The repression of women?
The homophobia?
The huge class difference? I guess Ishiguro was referring to the feeling of community...Yeah, that's right.
Much of the blame for what we are experiencing now lies with that absurd individualism into which we have fallen.
And technology is the main culprit.
I don't have Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or anything like that.
This obsession for each person to become their own Public Relations is ridiculous and exhausting.
Being so aware of us isolates us. The film talks about growing old and facing death with dignity.
How concerned are you? The truth is that I am not one of those people who think too much about their youth.
I feel very lucky now that I am finally old.
I look back and I was a very bad young man.
I was constantly anxious, I felt insecure.
I spent my entire youth improvising and couldn't think straight.
All those tribulations have disappeared.
I'm a good old man.
For the rest, and as far as death is concerned, I don't think about it.
As someone once said: "I'm not worried about death.
I just don't want to be there when it happens.” Do you ever stop to think about the legacy you leave behind as an artist? I have always had very low expectations of myself.
I started in the theater and I was very happy for more than ten years on stage.
I never thought I would end up doing television, let alone film.
The idea of being moderately popular was completely alien to me.
And now here you see me.
Let's just say that thinking of myself as someone else in terms of legacy is strange or just funny to me.
Honestly, I'm just thinking about trying to raise enough money for my next bill.
Most of my work-related memories have to do with it, paying off a mortgage or getting the rent. Don't you at least consider yourself a good actor?
Don't you read what is written about you? I don't know, really.
I never see a movie that I worked on.
I do read the reviews, but I am rarely mentioned.
They say wonders about Living and I'm glad.
I am very used to working on films that are highly praised by critics and that no one is going to see.
Not with this one... That's good.
I think about what he asks me and, the truth,
I see myself more as a freelancer or freelancer who is always dependent on the ideas of others.
The life of an actor is like that. This Oscar, what does it mean to you? I have no complaint.
Films like this, which don't have a great promotional campaign, need awards like this to get noticed.
What I am experiencing with this film is very beautiful, but also somewhat contradictory.
I feel a bit like at my own funeral.
Everyone approaches me, sends me messages or tells me on the street that they have cried a lot with my death.
It's like having died while alive. What do you remember of his work with Isabel Coixet? I don't want you to take me for his representative, but I think he is a wonderful person with incredible talent.
I had never before worked with a director who handled the camera herself.
Smart, original, classy.
.. He didn't pay me much for the job, that's true.
But it is also true that he did not need it then.
Do you know that she makes her own oil from her?
Incredible.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Facebook
instagram
Twitter
theater
cinema
Oscar awards