Bill Nighy
Born: December 12 1949
Where: Caterham, Surrey, England, UK
Nighy is one of Britain's most prolific film, TV and theatre actors, specialising in spent aristocratic roles and fading rock stars.
He was awarded a BAFTA for Love, Actually and the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award for best comedy performance for Still Crazy.
Nighy also won the Best Actor award in the British Independent Film Awards for the critically acclaimed Lawless Heart.
The son of a Croydon garage owner and a psychiatric nurse, he originally wanted to become a journalist but didn't have suitable qualifications.
After working as a messenger for The Field magazine, he went to Paris to write "the great novel" but only managed to get as far as the title.
When he ran out of money, the British consul shipped him home and a girlfriend suggested he should become an actor and he enrolled at the Guildford School of Dance and Drama.
TV work has included Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Antonia Bird's controversial The Men's Room and Reilly Ace of Spies.
He made his big screen debut as a squadron leader in Eye of the Needle in 1981 and also played an ear, nose and throat doctor in The Curse of the Pink Panther.
Dividing his time between TV and the big screen, he appeared in The Phantom of the Opera, Mack the Knife and Antonia and Jane.
In 1991, he played the lecherous Professor Mark Carleton in TV's The Men's Room and stuck with TV work - Absolute Hell, Unnatural Causes - until Bill Forsyth's Being Human in 1993.
Subsequent appearances included the rowing drama True Blue, the comedy Indian Summer and the family fantasy FairyTale: A True Story with Harvey Keitel.
In 1998, he essayed washed-up rock star Ray Simms alongside Tim Spall and Billy Connolly in the Golden Globe-nominated Still Crazy.
He went on to play supporting roles in the comedies Guest House Paradiso and Blow Dry.
Lawless Heart marked the resurgence of his film career proper and he went on to land meaty roles in I Capture The Castle and prison caper Lucky Break.
He stole the show in Richard Curtis' Love, Actually as faded rocker Billy Mack and switched styles to play an ancient vampire in the thriller Underworld.
Recent work includes the spoof zombie horror Shaun of the Dead and the big screen adaptation of Ian McEwan's chilling Enduring Love.
