The Pinstripe Pirate: How ‘Living’ Star Bill Nighy Overcame His Karaoke Nightmare And Became An International Treasure
After some 50 years in the business, Bill Nighy is used to people getting his surname wrong. It actually rhymes with ‘sigh’: the ‘y’ is silent. “My dad was very particular about it,” he says, “and for a while, I used to correct people on his behalf, because he couldn’t bear it when people said ‘Nigh-y’. It really got to him. But I’m very, very accustomed to it. The first time I was ever in a show that was reviewed in a paper, I was Bill Nigby. I’ve been Bill Nighty — that’s a regular one — and if there’s one more than any other, it’s Nighly. It’s funny, when people get things wrong, they don’t get them wrong by simplifying them, they get them wrong by making them more complicated. So, they lengthen my name. It’s always slightly longer than it should be.”