And what I already have for these posts -- or don't have -- may, just may, guide some of my thinking on the final movies I watch.
The example in this case is my "three who had a bad year" segment of my wrap-up post that follows the day after I put up my rankings. I've already got my three, but I am still looking for one other honorable mention. I thought Bill Nighy could be that guy, just because I noticed I'd seen him in a movie I didn't like very much (The Beautiful Game), and if I also did not like Joy, one of my contenders for my third-to-last movie of the year, then he could work his way into my final honorable mention spot. (Or dishonorable mention, I should say.)
Is this a good way to go about this? Who can say.
So I also went on to IMDB, to ensure there weren't other Nighy performances in 2024 I hadn't considered in my calculations, that might either support or detract from his candidacy.
As it turns out, there were seven.
Two of those were movies that could potentially be feathers in his cap for the dishonor. I mas middling to negative on both The Wild Robot and Role Play, the latter of which was the second movie I watched for the year all the way back in January. (Yes, I don't love The Wild Robot. We can talk about it another time.)
But then Nighy was also in five other movies I did not see, much of it also as vocal work like he did in The Wild Robot. Those titles were That Christmas, Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue, The First Omen, Dragonkeeper and 10 Lives.
Is anyone working harder in Hollywood than this man, who turned three quarters of a century old less than a month ago? More to the point, is anyone in such demand?
Obviously you can churn out vocal work at must higher rates than work that requires you in front of a camera. Still, even with those four vocal roles, there were still five of the "in person" type. (And I noticed that he is called Cardinal Lawrence in The First Omen, which is the same name as Ralph Fiennes' character in Conclave. Coincidence? I may have to look into this.)
I have always appreciated Nighy as an actor, though I can see, I have never yet written about him on this blog. And certainly, he does have one of "those voices," which explains why he's cast in so many animated films -- other than his sheer willingness to do it.
Maybe Nighy does still need to put away money for his retirement, if it ever comes, considering that he is comparatively late to becoming a household name. It strikes me that I only first became aware of the actor 22 years ago, when he was in Love Actually and when he was already 53. That's right, my entire awareness of him as an actor comes at ages when he was older than I am now.
Now of course Love Actually was not his first role -- in fact, it was his 70th, of an eventual 168 (and rapidly counting), dating all the way back to 1976. But the fact that I did not know who he was before that, when I'm the sort of guy who keeps track of this sort of thing, means he toiled in some form of obscurity for those first 27 years of his career. (It turns out, I had seen him in at least three movies before Love Actually, which are Alive and Kicking, Lucky Break and Blow Dry, though clearly he didn't make as much of an impression on me there as he did in Richard Curtis' dubiously enduring Christmas movie.)
And there can be little dispute that the use of Bill Nighy is only becoming more common as he ages. These recent years of his career may not be featuring his most prominent roles, though there can be no arguing the perceived desirability of casting him. And even in saying the roles themselves may be getting less juicy, I have to acknowledge that he received an Oscar nomination just two years ago for his work in the pretty good Living. Which, interestingly, was his first such nomination, further proving his status as a late bloomer.
So if you want a Brit who's a bit crusty and a bit superior, but ultimately has that twinkle of warmth that undercuts those traits, Bill Nighy is your guy, and it appears he will be for several more years to come.
If you're looking for range, well, it may be wisest to look elsewhere. As just one example of how Nighy always plays variations on the same character, he has, to my knowledge, never even played an American, unlike many of his fellow countrymen and women in the acting community.
For the record, Nighy will not be getting a dishonorable mention for his "bad" 2024. I did watch Joy, and liked it quite a bit. And I attribute a significant percentage of my affection to Nighy, though Thomasin McKenzie is fabulous in it.
Of those traits I ascribe to Bill Nighy, dishonor is not one of them.
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