Contrary to the blog I recently posted about Brits and Australian actors increasingly morphing to a US dialect, here’s a glimpse of a great interview with British actor Bill Nighy, who takes on an Aussie accent for an American film production.
…Bill Nighy is one of Britain’s most recognisable character actors appearing in some of the best loved films on both sides of the Atlantic, from “Love Actually” to “Underworld“.
Starring in Jerry Bruckheimer’s upcoming G Force with Nicholas cage and Penelope Cruz he is also acting opposite Tom Cruise as one of several German officers plotting to assassinate Hitler in the closing days of World War 2, in Valkyrie.
Nighy talked exclusively to by phone from the film’s New York press junket.
Question: Tell me about G-Force that sounds like a sort of action movie.
Nighy: Well, I suppose it is an action move, but again, thankfully, I don’t have to do any of it. Most of the action is performed by guinea pigs, hence the G in the title. It’s a Jerry Bruckheimer, very big production.
Apparently the director’s son at one point got a guinea pig, and said, “Hey, dad, why are there no guinea pig movies?” So he wrote one, took it to Jerry, and now there is one. And three guinea pigs and a fly save the world.
Question: And you play?
Nighy: I play an Australian industrialist bent on world domination.
Question: Tell me that you do not do this with an Australian accent?
Nighy: Paul, I do this with an Australian accent.
Question: So how is your Australian accent? Am I going to be cringing in the aisles?
Nighy: Probably, yes. [LAUGHTER] What can I say? Obviously you’ll be cringing in the aisles, but you’re just going to have to open your heart, and let me in and just going forgive me. For once, you know, I did a bad thing. I don’t know. I mean, I figure it’s good, otherwise I wouldn’t have attempted it. But you may – you will almost certainly. Next time we meet you’ll be saying, “It was quite funny, but God, where did that accent come from?”
Question: Did you study any Australians to get into character?
Nighy: I did at one point study Australian. I had to play an Australian in a play at the National Theatre in England called Pravda, with Anthony Hopkins, when I had to play an Australian, so I went to the place to find Australians in London, I was told, is the Chelsea Arts Club. So I went directly to the Chelsea Arts Club with my tape recorder and my script. And I had a very, very, very good time. I went in the bar there, and I put the tape recorder on the bar, I put the script next to it and I bought them all drinks, and in exchange for them reading the script into the tape recorder. I had some hysterical tapes, I must say. Very funny.
Read the complete interview at: www.moviehole.net.