A gravely ill patriarch gathers his family for a momentous revelation. It is hardly cinema’s freshest premise, but & Sons gives it an unusual turn – one best left undisclosed, though it gently pushes the story towards science fiction. The father is a celebrated novelist, as withdrawn as JD Salinger and as bearded and bedraggled as Catweazle. Having produced nothing for decades, the fictional AN Dyer first appears stretched across a sofa, refusing to answer the telephone. “I don’t do phone calls,” he mutters.

The same cannot be said of the actor portraying him. “I spend an enormous amount of time on the phone,” Bill Nighy says cheerfully. He is calling from north-west London after browsing through bookshops. “I’m also a committed texter. I was always fast on the old Nokia. Rather pleased with myself, actually.” And emojis? “I was once philosophically against them. Most are rather naff.” Then he names the acceptable ones. “I’m fond of the flamingo and the purple dahlia. The jumping shark is good. Sometimes I pair it with the jumping dolphin. On rare occasions, I use the golfer halfway through a swing when congratulating somebody. But never smiley faces.”

Zoom, however, is forbidden, which explains why we are talking by telephone. “Eventually, every Zoom call started making me miserable. I’m old enough to ask, ‘May I retire from Zoom?’” At 76, he has also abandoned several other disagreeable activities. “Meals where work is discussed. That’s one. Lunch in particular. You’re trapped there for ages, and it muddles everything. Working lunches are now completely impossible.” Parties have rarely appealed either. He once enjoyed what he describes as “a thrill, or perhaps an anti-thrill” from dropping invitations – especially coveted ones – directly into the bin. Asked what might immediately make him reject an acting role, he replies without hesitation: “Togas.”

There are no togas in & Sons, where Nighy’s Dyer confronts his resentful elder sons, played by Johnny Flynn and George MacKay, and an ex-wife, played by Imelda Staunton, who still despises him for fathering a child, portrayed by Hamnet’s Noah Jupe, with someone else. Dyer has been harsh, remote and emotionally unavailable, yet seems convinced that literary brilliance absolves him. Nighy rejects that notion. “It’s like badly behaved footballers being defended with, ‘His temperament is part of his genius.’ Oh, please. I find that idea completely objectionable. I don’t believe it at all.”

Dyer says that his ambition as a parent was simply to “do no harm”. Nighy has a daughter, actor and director Mary Nighy, with his former partner, actor Diana Quick. They were together for 27 years before separating in 2008. Did he begin fatherhood with any guiding principles? “Good grief, Ryan. That was a long time ago.” It was: he now has two grandchildren. “But no, not especially. You invent it as you go. You get things wrong, try to repair them and, with luck, find an approach that works. My own parents weren’t cruel or overbearing, and I didn’t want to be either.”

Cruelty is very much among Dyer’s traits in & Sons, alongside fury and hostility towards humanity – characteristics Nighy is seldom invited to explore. “People don’t generally think of me that way,” he says. “Although half of what I’ve done has passed out of living memory. Eventually, everyone who saw it is dead.”

People still praise his turn as the shameless former rock star Billy Mack, who casually describes his latest festive single as a “festering turd”, in Richard Curtis’s 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually. Nighy has also appeared in major spectacles, including two Pirates of the Caribbean films, where his face vanished beneath a mass of digitally animated tentacles. Yet audiences are especially attached to his softer, lovably imperfect characters, whether brutally candid like Billy or quietly hesitant: the restrained, terminally ill civil servant in Living, which brought Nighy his first Oscar nomination; the husband who loses his nerve before betraying his wife in Lawless Heart; or the Scrabble devotee hunting for his vanished son in Sometimes Always Never.

Nor should his status as a romantic figure be overlooked. An early breakthrough came with The Men’s Room, the provocative 1991 BBC drama in which his explicit scenes as a lustful academic attracted criticism from the Broadcasting Standards Council. After playing his spouse in Notes on a Scandal, Cate Blanchett asked an interviewer: “Which thoughtful western woman wouldn’t want to embrace him?”

If he now finds himself repeatedly cast in familiar territory, he is untroubled. “Perhaps some people enjoy seeing me do the things I usually do. In the same way, I always want Steve McQueen to behave like Steve McQueen.” What lesson has he taken from the understated star of The Great Escape? “That I’m never going to be Steve McQueen,” he says with a sigh. “It takes tremendous confidence to work as he did. No explosions, no grasping for trophies. It’s a sort of reckless self-control.” Prince is another idol. “Everything Prince did looked appealing. Anyone who can drop into the splits and rise again exactly on the backbeat … I’d follow that person anywhere.”

As a young man, however, Nighy worshipped writers: Hemingway, Fitzgerald and others. That lends particular resonance to his role as a novelist in & Sons, because writing fiction was once his own long-standing ambition. He credits Mr Weir, an English teacher at his Catholic grammar school. “He said, ‘You might consider attempting a novel.’ I was probably 14. I’m not presenting that as proof of some unrecognised childhood genius. But the suggestion exploded in my mind.”

At 15, he found work at The Field, the magazine devoted to hunting and fishing. What did the position involve? “I replaced the roller towel in the women’s lavatory. All the women from the typing pool would wander in. Not because I possessed irresistible charm, I should point out, but because they knew I’d turn red. Those roller towels are surprisingly complicated. I’d make a mess of it, and they’d laugh.”

On another occasion, he was reprimanded by the company’s chief executive. “I grew up in a small town – Caterham in Surrey – and I became wildly excited whenever I spotted a Rolls-Royce or Bentley. The CEO summoned me because he had driven past while I was bouncing around and waving at him. He told me, ‘That isn’t the conduct I expect from an employee.’”

Paris came next. “I’m a complete walking cliché,” Nighy admits. “I escaped there with the intention of becoming a writer. Like countless others, I headed straight for Shakespeare & Company, loitering around in the belief that I’d produce lethal sentences and acquire a girlfriend. Neither occurred. Eventually, I was begging near the Trocadéro.” His literary aspirations were not consciously abandoned; they simply faded. “Somebody advised me to attend drama school, and acting became my life. I assumed I’d return to writing eventually. I still assume that. I’m simply exceptionally talented at putting things off.”

There may be no novel underway, but an informal spoken autobiography is emerging in 25-minute pieces through his podcast, Ill-Advised. In it, he acts as a reassuring advice columnist, giving leisurely answers to listeners’ questions on subjects ranging from clothing to escaping embarrassing social situations. Improvisation suits him, so he does not read the questions before recording. “I wander verbally in real time, but it turns out I’ve considered almost every topic already. Trousers, for example, because I’m mildly obsessive about lounge suits and the shape of shirt collars.”

Ill-Advised is preparing to begin its third series, draws more than 300,000 listeners each month and received the Broadcasting Press Guild’s 2026 Podcast of the Year award. None of that prevents Nighy from apologising for its existence. “I did my best not to start a podcast,” he insists, maintaining his familiar air of someone who acquired a remarkable career and widespread admiration from audiences, reviewers and fellow actors merely by accidentally leaving a lift on the wrong floor. He may never be confused with Steve McQueen, but his description of the American star could just as easily describe Nighy himself: no fireworks, no chasing prizes, only an expert command of reckless restraint.

& Sons arrives in cinemas on 21 August. The third series of Ill-Advised starts on 3 September.