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 Africa Lives On The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ
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Africa Lives On The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ
The Girl in the Café
- Bill Nighy
"It took exactly three seconds to heartily agree to be
involved in this project, because it's such a gas," says Bill
Nighy.
Ìý
"The script is a cracker, as you would expect from
Richard Curtis. It is extremely funny - I hope, or I'm going to kill myself
- and it's also romantic as you'd also expect - again, if it's not I'm
going to have to kill myself.
Ìý
"It's such a satisfying script in many ways; it's
not just romantic or just funny. If we pull it off it will be - affecting,
touching and moving.
Ìý
"It's a wonderful part. I play Lawrence, who is a rather
reserved gentleman: 'meek' is how he is described in the script. He's
very shy; pathologically shy. As a result he's lived a lonesome existence,
and in the course of the film you see the sky clears for a moment and
he is joined by, in an unlikely fashion, an extremely wonderful and glamorous
young lady - it has a profound effect on him which hopefully will be amusing
to watch.
Ìý
"Lawrence is a civil servant and has been devoted obsessively
to his job; he works for the Chancellor of the Exchequer - Lawrence is
always the guy standing behind the guy who's on the news.
Ìý
"He's older than everyone and junior to everyone.
For all of his life, work's the one single thing that he occupies himself
with; and then he just happens to go into his regular café one day, and
he meets this stranger in the time-honoured tradition - and it rocks his
world. We get to watch.
Ìý
"Kelly (Macdonald), who plays Gina, is
just completely dreamy to work with. Deeply gifted and very, very intuitive
and very funny and incredibly beautiful and sexy and wonderful, and that's
enough about her….!
Ìý
"Apart from the fact that Richard (Curtis) writes
world class jokes, he writes dialogue which isn't entirely 'naturalistic'
which I find particularly thrilling. It not only has a deeply satisfying
comic spin, but also a poetic, very English spin. And jokes are useful,
because information travels very well in joke form.
Ìý
"What's so brilliant about this script, in particular,
is the way in which Richard has chosen Kelly's character Gina as the person
who speaks out. For reasons that are explained later on, she has been
closeted for a while and she is generally uninformed about things - as
we all are.
Ìý
"And when she comes across the kind of information
that Lawrence deals with in his job, she finds it profoundly shocking.
She's not immune to it, the way that lots of us are. She doesn't watch
TV, she doesn't read newspapers. She has a kind of naivety about her and
her immediate reaction is, what will we be doing about this? - it's not
complicated at all!
Ìý
"I haven't suddenly become an expert on world affairs
by working on The Girl in the Cafe, but then again I don't think I'm required
to be and I don't think I need to be.
Ìý
"I was always aware of world poverty - from the moment
your grandmother says you'd better finish what's on your plate, because
there are millions of children starving all over the world.
Ìý
"But I had the same relationship with poverty that
I see in most people around me, which is that somehow we get through the
day and do absolutely nothing about it. You kind of assume that someone
is taking care of that.
Ìý
"There are obviously great men and women who have
been working all of their lives, but in terms of governmental help and
assistance, so far it doesn't seem to have been a success.
Ìý
"I knew that Africa was the emergency, but I didn't
know quite how urgent the situation was. I didn't know that 30,000 children
die every day. I didn't know that every three seconds a child who absolutely
shouldn't die, dies. I didn't know that.
Ìý
"I didn't know that since we started this interview, God
knows how many children have died. I didn't know that was happening and
so, when people say, 'It's a complicated issue' - that's almost three
seconds.
Ìý
"And I think that if perhaps they came from somewhere else
in the world, it wouldn't be so complicated."
Ìý
Bill Nighy's award-winning career spans theatre, television
and film. Recent films include Love Actually; Hitchhiker's Guide To The
Galaxy; The Magic Roundabout; The Constant Gardener; Enduring Love; Shaun
Of The Dead; I Captured The Castle; and Still Crazy.
Ìý
Recent television includes State Of Play; He Knew He Was
Right; and The Young Visiters.
Ìý
He is currently filming the blockbuster movies Pirates
Of The Caribbean 2 & 3.
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