Age: 76
male
William Francis Nighy (born 12 December 1949) is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Tony Award. Nighy started his career with the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool and made his London debut with the Royal National Theatre starting with The Illuminatus! in 1977. There he gained acclaim for his roles in David Hare's Pravda in 1985, Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1991, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1993, and Anton Chekov's The Seagull in 1994. He received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nomination for his performance in Blue/Orange in 2001. He made his Broadway debut in Hare's The Vertical Hour in 2006, and returned in the 2015 revival of Hare's Skylight earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination. Early film roles include in the comedies Still Crazy (1998), and Blow Dry (1999) before his breakout role in Love Actually (2003) which earned him a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. He soon gained recognition portraying Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2006-2007), and Viktor in the Underworld film series (2003-2009). Other films include Shaun of the Dead (2004), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), The Constant Gardener (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Hot Fuzz (2007), Valkyrie (2008), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), About Time (2013), Emma (2020), and Living (2022), the last of these earning him his first career Academy Award nomination. Nighy has gained acclaim for his roles in television earning a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his performance in BBC One series State of Play (2003), and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for the BBC film Gideon's Daughter (2007). He's also known for his roles in HBO's The Girl in the Café (2006) and PBS's Page Eight (2012).
In the middle of New York City, characters from the old stories and fairy tales live among us in exile. Bill Willingham has taken characters we've grown up with, including Snow White, Bigby (a.k.a the Big Bad) Wolf, Jack Horner, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Boy Blue, the Frog Prince and many more, and spins them into a realistic, modern day setting. The characters we, the people of the Mundane World, thought were fictional have come to the real world to escape The Emperor/The Adversary, a despotic conqueror of tremendous power who rules over The Empire. Eventually, a number of these characters, heroes and villains alike, decide to put aside their differences and stick together in their own community. Old crimes are forgiven by signing a compact which makes them a citizen of this community, and also forbids them from revealing their true nature to the "mundies". Non-human characters who can't afford a spell to make them look human are consigned to a secluded "farm" in Upstate New York. However, those old crimes are rarely, if ever, forgotten; a major early plot point is that Bigby Wolf is banned from said "farm" for all the atrocities he committed before he reformed.
