Actor says he took books after applying to acting school to impress a girl, and he now refuses to perform in Bard’s plays
from a library to help him get into drama school – but says he now refuses to perform the playwright’s work onstage.
He and an older friend “stole the complete works of Shakespeare, and we stole the complete works of George Bernard Shaw which we thought was sort of modern”, Nighy told BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life. “We could have borrowed it like everybody else, but for some reason, we were sort of developing a criminal mentality.”
Preparing for the audition, he inadvertently learned two female parts while “down the pub” with his friend, he said. He performed the role of Eliza Doolittle from Shaw’s play Pygmalion, and the part of Cesario in Twelfth Night. Nighy said the girl he was trying to impress had originally written the letter to the drama school to gain an audition. “She could have said astronaut and I would have given it a shot,” he said.
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