Backstage with… Bill Nighy on his new film Living – which is already been talked up for an Oscar
He’s one of this country’s best loved actors, famed for roles in films such as Love Actually and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
But Living could be Bill Nighy’s finest work, with critics already saying it could get a shot at next year’s Oscars.
It is a remake of a 1952 Japanese film Ikiru, and sees Nighy play Mr Williams, a dedicated life-long bureaucrat who is told he has a terminal illness.
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He then makes the decision to change his ways and start living life to the full.
For Nighy, he told Backstage, the TV and film podcast from Sky News, that it was a role that he couldn’t turn down.
“I met Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize winning novelist, for the first time, and it was quite daunting – it was his suggestion that he’d wanted to transpose the [original] film from Tokyo to London for a while.
“And then when we met he put it together with me, which was for me obviously a marvellous development, and then he agreed to write the script.
“Then when Oliver Hermanus, who we’d seen his previous film, Moffie, which he shot with Jamie Ramsay, the cinematographer that made this film, and they came as a package, and they were they just turned out to be completely incredible. So the whole thing was very, very attractive.”
Nighy added that at its heart, the film is about “procrastination”, saying it is something that “everybody struggles with”.
He explained: “The film suggests it’s just an example of how you can resist that. You can actually get stuff done, and you can actually give your life some meaning rather than not.”
Aimee Lou Wood and Bill Nighy in Living. Pic: Sony Pictures
And while Mr Williams in the film looks at his own legacy ahead of his impending death, Nighy explains that he is not someone that is concerned with his own.
“I don’t think I really accept that I’m going to die,” he said to Backstage.
“I kind of know it’s going to happen, but I don’t really believe it – I don’t think I’m alone in that.
“But no, I don’t think about my legacy. I used to think that my films would come on at three in the morning when people couldn’t sleep, you know? And they’d be like, ‘Oh, there’s that bloke. What’s his name? He was in that other thing you remember’… But now, of course, they just Google, and it’ll be digital. It’ll be all streamed, but no.”
You can listen to our review of Living in this week’s Backstage podcast.
Taylor Swift has revealed the release date for her new album, The Life Of A Showgirl.
The pop megastar announced her 12th studio album earlier this week but didn’t give many details.
Now, in social media posts and an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast, Swift revealed just what fans can expect from the new album.
Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast. Pic: New Heights
The Life of Showgirl, written during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, will be released on 3 October.
It consists of 12 songs, including the title track that features pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The full track list is:
1. The Fate Of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin The Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life Of A Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)
Long-time collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers who worked with Swift on some of her biggest hits, joined the pop star for this album.
Within four hours of posting the full podcast episode on YouTube, it had already gathered 4.7m views.
The cover of Taylor Swift’s newly announced album. Pic: Republic Records
The back cover of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl. Pic: Republic Records
‘The hardest-working star in pop’
The album follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was released during the Eras tour.
That tour, with shows on five continents and in 51 cities, raked in more than $2.2bn (£1.62bn) and was the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Read more about Taylor Swift:
Swift’s final London show was the ‘best’
The impact of the ‘excruciating’ Era’s tour
Her new chart record
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during her podcast appearance.
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplow said after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
Disgraced US film producer Harvey Weinstein is to be tried for a third time in a sexual assault case.
A jury in New York could not reach a verdict in June against the 73-year-old who was accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, and a mistrial was declared.
Judge Curtis Farber has said he wants the new trial to happen before the end of this year.
The same jury found Weinstein guilty in June of sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish former runway model Kaja Sokola the same year.
Weinstein will be sentenced for the guilty verdict in Ms Haley’s case on 30 September.
He denied all of the charges. Throughout the retrial, his lawyers insisted the sexual encounters with his three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual,” and labelled the women as opportunists.
Weinstein was originally convicted of rape and criminal sexual act by the same court in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crimes.
Last year, however, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, prompting Weinstein’s retrial this summer.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
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In 2017, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him propelled the #MeToo movement.
Some of those accusations later led to criminal charges and his convictions in New York and California.
Before the retrial, Weinstein was also serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in California in December 2022. He has also denied this charge.
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