Sunnyside Up

Nesbitt was up to whatever challenge came his way, but, no, Boyle had already told stories about those kinds of characters and had something really radical in mind for the actor. This time around, he would venture into what was for him uncharted territory: a heartwarming family film. And after reading the script, Nesbitt was happy to go along with Boyle for the ride.
Shot in Liverpool and set in modern-day Manchester, “Millions” is the fanciful tale of 7-year-old Damian (played by Alex Etel), a motherless boy who strikes it rich when a bag of cash mysteriously flies through the air and crushes his backyard fort. Damian tells his 9-year-old brother, Anthony (Lewis McGibbon), about the loot and the pair decides to keep the discovery a secret. While Damian gives fistfuls of cash to the poor because he is convinced the money is a gift from God, and he is encouraged by imaginary visits from his favorite saints, Anthony buys gadgets for himself and expensive gifts for his friends. The catch is, their haul consists of hundreds of thousands of pounds and Britain is just days away from converting its currency to euros. If the boys don’t spend the money fast or find a way to convert it, it will all be worthless. Nesbitt plays the boys’ widowed father, a hardworking man who has a surprising reaction to his sons’ extra-curricular financial activities. Complicating matters is the fact the money really comes from a train robbery and the man who stole the cash wants it back.
Speaking recently by phone while driving through a snowstorm in Britain to see his beloved Manchester United play Milan, Nesbitt confided, “I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect a sort of modern moral fairy tale.
“I expected something much darker, so it was really the appeal of working with Danny [that made me take the job], and then when I read the script, I thought it’s an unusual piece for Danny, and also, I suppose, quite unusual for me.”
Like Boyle, Nesbitt has worked in various media throughout the last decade. Whereas Boyle has hopped from drama to comedy to horror to fantasy with various degrees of success, Nesbitt has maintained a steady stream of acclaim for his work on the television shows “Ballykissangel,” “Cold Feet” and “Murphy’s Law,” and in films as vastly different as the 2002 drama “Bloody Sunday” and the 1998 comedy “Waking Ned Devine.” The actor, who once studied to be a French teacher, said he enjoys the variety and tries hard not to repeat himself.
“After I did ‘Cold Feet,’ I was just constantly [offered] the same sort of show, but a lesser quality in the writing, and after ‘Murphy’s Law’ people send you a lot of cop shows,” the 40-year-old Coleraine native said. “After ‘Bloody Sunday,’ I was thrown quite a lot of political, heavy stuff. That tends to be the case, but I suppose I do make the decision to go away from something that I’ve immediately done.”
Nesbitt added that it is his quest for diversity and good writing that has helped him avoid being typecast throughout his career.
“I work a lot,” he noted. “I did [the prison-break comedy] ‘Lucky Break’ almost concurrently with ‘Bloody Sunday,’ and I took both ‘Lucky Break’ and ‘Bloody Sunday’ to the Sundance Film Festival, and Paul Greengrass, the director of ‘Bloody Sunday,’ and I went to watch the premiere of ‘Lucky Break’ and he was just going, ‘I can’t believe you were doing this at the same time.’ “
In addition to working on three different TV shows since 1991, Nesbitt also appeared in more than two dozen films and still found time to star in the recent TV movie “Wall of Silence” and the mini-series “The Canterbury Tales.”
“I suppose I have some sort of work ethic thing, but I just always try to mix things up,” he said. “In Britain, it’s incredibly hard to say you exclusively work in film because the film industry here, contrary to what a lot of people say it might be or say it is going to be, is really not very successful, and I think a lot of the best stuff shot on film in this country is shot on film for television. There’s no real difference at all in terms of the acting. It really is quality. Then, I suppose, truthfully, it is slightly more cool to be doing films just so you can tell your mates, but I have no real preference.”
As for his future, Nesbitt isn’t ruling out a move to the U.S., though he said it isn’t imminent.
“I’m beginning to think my profile is pretty big in England and I’m going from, hopefully, one quality, high-profile drama to the next,” he said.
“I might take a bit of a back seat for a while. I might concentrate on either smaller films or more independent films or possibly making the move over to America. I don’t know, but there is obviously the risk of failure, as well, which doesn’t entice me too much.’
Nesbitt is so popular right now, he finds himself mobbed wherever he goes in the UK, prompting him to wonder if life across the Atlantic might be a little more peaceful.
“I’ve had my ups and downs with the media — some of it self-inflicted, some of it not,’ he said, alluding to the days in 2003 when some extramarital dalliances he had turned into front-page news in Britain.
“People are very friendly, and if people cross the street to say they like you in something, that’s not a huge price to pay, but it can be invasive at times, obviously,” he said. “It can be difficult for my wife and kids. I don’t know what it’s like in the States. It strikes me that those who live in Los Angeles . . . people expect to see celebrities. Where I am, it has its ups and downs.”
Although his admirers are usually supportive and eager to talk with Nesbitt about whatever it is they loved him in last, some moviegoers have also on rare occasions made trouble for the actor and his family, specifically when they vandalized his parents’ house in Northern Ireland after he played civil rights activist Ivan Cooper in the politically charged ‘Bloody Sunday.’
“Overall, my family has been very supportive and they’ve had difficulties,” he said. “They had a few difficulties when I did ‘Bloody Sunday’ because I come from a Protestant background, but they were very supportive of that and they had difficulties when I had my ups and downs with the tabloids, but they’ve remained very supportive and I think are overall very proud.”
Of course, Nesbitt conceded, his parents weren’t always keen on the idea of their youngest child and only son chasing an acting career instead of pursuing a more stable profession — like teaching.
“I’m from a family of teachers,” Nesbitt said. “I started out to be a French teacher, although I had sung a lot when I was younger and I got my equity card when I was quite young through the local theater.
“But I dropped out of university and I said, ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ and I think they were horrified by that. My mom didn’t talk to me for a month, so it had its bonuses,” he added, laughing.
“I wasn’t really considering it as a serious career. It was just a way of getting out of writing essays on the French existentialists and it was a good way of meeting women. I think once the success sort of came, I think my parents began to feel a lot more comfortable with it.”