• Bill Nighy’s career surged after starring in the 2003 film “Love Actually.”
• Nighy said that his compensation increased, and he no longer had to audition for projects.
• He now stars in the Netflix film “Joy,” about the first IVF baby.

Acclaimed actor Bill Nighy says that his moderately successful career blew up — in a good way — after he starred in the 2003 Christmas film “Love Actually.”

Nighy starred in the Richard Curtis film as Billy Mack, a legendary rock and roll artist trying to get a No. 1 single on Christmas. “Love Actually” was a smash hit, and though Nighy was over 30 years into his acting career, the film revitalized it.

“The biggest developments were that what I was paid for a job quintupled and I never had to audition again,” he told British newspaper The i. “If you asked any actor what their top five things to wish for, one of them would be, ‘Please don’t let me have to audition any more.'”

Nighy had starred in two other successful projects that year: “Underworld,” a monster film in which he played a vampire, and “State of Play,” a BBC One drama. He was “doing alright” career-wise at the time, he told The i, but 2003 proved to be a turning point. Suddenly, the balance of power had shifted in his meetings for potential roles.

“They were trying to get me to do the job,” he told The i. “I didn’t have to sing for my supper.”

These days, Nighy is starring in the Netflix film “Joy,” which tells the story of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown. He plays Patrick Steptoe, the director of the Centre for Human Reproduction and part of the team that developed IVF treatment.

And while the success of “Love Actually” changed his working prospects, Nighy says that it hasn’t drastically disrupted his day-to-day life.

“I’m not mobbed or anything. There’s no great heat attached. I’m not Hugh Grant, or Tom Cruise,” he told The i. “It takes 30 seconds and people are kind. They often want to talk about that film that I did, even though they can’t always remember it.”