Bill Nighy Quotes

I'm not the first one to say it, but that time onstage is a heightened sense of present tense.

I love performing. The sounds coming at me are dynamic, colorful and multi-layered. The energy from the musicians around me and from the audience is a swirl of excitement. Sometimes, I can feel the stage vibrating under my feet.

I was in a band when I was in high school, and I was bitten by the performance bug, if anything else.

I learnt a lot from my Broadway experience, it was one of the most challenging things I will probably ever have to do in my entire life, because it was eight shows a week - live singing with really hard choreography - and the spontaneity, you don't know what's going to happen.

Being on stage is magic. There's nothing like it. You feel the energy of everybody who's out there. You feel it all over your body. When the lights hit you, it's all over, I swear it is.

I really do like being on stage. Compared to television I have a lot more control - it's a lot more relaxed and loose.

There's nothing like performing for a live audience.

The first time I stepped on stage and I started singing, I knew that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life.

There's nothing like performing in front of a live crowd and just having people literally react to whatever it is you do, and there's nothing better than when you get that connection with the audience.

Performing live was something that I had to really work at.

When I perform live, I'm doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don't think about it too much.

The adrenaline of performing live in front of an audience is a feeling that's hard to replicate.

I grew up on the side of the stage. I never had a fear of an audience. I never felt like they were separated from us. We were all in the living room, and it happens to be a big living room. I continue to operate on that assumption.

I also think something that makes the whole live performance fun for me is that I love my music.

Live performance is everything. First of all, I have terrible stage fright. But beyond that, once the music starts, it's OK.

When I go to do a show, it's my time; it's all about me. You've come to see me. You haven't come to see me if you're in an armchair watching a video. It's very distracting.

It feels really good to be doing Blink justice. Stepping on stage for the first show was pretty crazy. I've been skydiving several times, and that's the closest thing I can compare it to. Such a beautiful rush.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

You're out on stage, the music is blaring, the crowd is screaming, the lights are flashing, your heart is pumping, the sweat is flying, and it's the greatest feeling in the whole world.

When I'm onstage, I hope it looks like what I want to see - the lights, the pyro, the band.

There's an art to playing live. It's a great feeling. It's indescribable. It's what I love. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.

To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.

For me, it’s like playing the same instrument but in a different context. TV work – it’s really about getting it just right. You have a chance to try again if it’s not. Theatre is like playing a rock show. It doesn’t really matter if you make a tiny mistake. It’s the whole vibe and getting people to feel you. It’s about carrying the moment through all the way with you in an hour and 20 minutes of the narrative.

And from the first moment that I ever walked on stage in front of a darkened auditorium with a couple of hundred people sitting there, I was never afraid, I was never fearful, I didn't suffer from stage fright, because I felt so safe on that stage. I wasn't Patrick Stewart, I wasn't in the environment that frightened me, I was pretending to be someone else, and I liked the other people I pretended to be. So I felt nothing but security for being on stage. And I think that's what drew me to this strange job of playing make-believe.

I always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.