Colonel Osborne Bill Nighy "... Mrs. Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and that he was an older man than her father. Colonel Osborne's age exceeded her father's by about a month, and as he was now past fifty, he might be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a safe friend for a young married woman. But he was in every respect a man very different from Sir Marmaduke... Now Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, with no burdens but those imposed upon him by his position as a Member of Parliament, a man of fortune to whom the world had been very easy. It was not therefore said so decidedly of him as of Sir Marmaduke, that he was a middle-aged man, although he had probably already lived more than two-thirds of his life. And he was a good-looking man of his age, bald indeed at the top of his head, and with a considerable sprinkling of grey hair through his bushy beard; but upright in his carriage, active, and quick in his step, who dressed well, and was clearly determined to make the most he could of what remained to him of the advantages of youth. Colonel Osborne was always so dressed that no one ever observed the nature of his garments, being no doubt well aware that no man after twenty-five can afford to call special attention to his coat, his hat, his cravat, or his trousers; but nevertheless the matter was one to which he paid much attention, and he was by no means lax in ascertaining what his tailor did for him. He always rode a pretty horse, and mounted his groom on one at any rate as pretty. He was known to have an excellent stud down in the shires, and had the reputation of going well with hounds. Poor Sir Marmaduke could not have ridden a hunt to save either his government or his credit. When, therefore, Mrs. Trevelyan declared to her sister that Colonel Osborne was a man whom she was entitled to regard with semi-parental feelings of veneration because he was older than her father, she made a comparison, which was more true in the letter than in the spirit. And when she asserted that Colonel Osborne had known her since she was a baby, she fell again into the same mistake. Colonel Osborne had indeed known her when she was a baby, and had in old days been the very intimate friend of her father; but of herself he had seen little or nothing since those baby days, till he had met her just as she was about to become Mrs. Trevelyan; and though it was natural that so old a friend should come to her and congratulate her and renew his friendship, nevertheless it was not true that he made his appearance in her husband's house in the guise of the useful old family friend, who gives silver cups to the children and kisses the little girls for the sake of the old affection which he has borne for the parents. We all know the appearance of that old gentleman, how pleasant and dear a fellow he is, how welcome is his face within the gate, how free he makes with our wine, generally abusing it, how he tells our eldest daughter to light his candle for him, how he gave silver cups when the girls were born, and now bestows tea-services as they get married -- a most useful, safe, and charming fellow, not a year younger-looking or more nimble than ourselves, without whom life would be very blank. We all know that man; but such a man was not Colonel Osborne in the house of Mr. Trevelyan's young bride... " After wowing audiences as newspaper editor Cameron Foster in BBC 1's acclaimed series State Of Play, Bill Nighy stole the show from a strong ensemble cast in Love Actually as faded rock star Billy Mack. "I never had a burning drive to be an actor," he admits. "I flunked school and didn't seem to have many prospects. But I met a girl who was going to drama teachers' college and she suggested that I might go to drama school, and it seemed like a bit of a gas not to go to work for a bit. I never thought I would be an actor for very long, if at all. I was an average mess as a young man and I didn't really have a thought in my head worth reporting. I was a bit of a dreamer." "But I'm a lucky boy. I've been in world premieres of plays which I think will be performed a hundred years from now such as Skylight by David Hare, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Betrayal by Harold Pinter -- and this is what I will tell my grandchildren, that I worked with those writers." It was in another David Hare play, A Map Of The World, that Nighy met his long-term partner Diana Quick in 1982. They have a 19-year-old daughter Mary. Nighy has enjoyed roles in such films as Shaun of the Dead, Lawless Heart, Still Crazy, Alive and Kicking and on television in Longitude, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, State of Play, The Canterbury Tales, and Masterpiece Theatre's The Lost Prince. He can be seen in the much-anticipated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) with John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel. Nighy comments on his role in He Knew He Was Right: "Colonel Osborne is a vain man who behaves in a manner which is heartless and cruel. In the novel it's slightly ambiguous but I think there's no doubting where Trollope stands on the matter. Osborne technically does no wrong, but in effect he causes great harm to two young people who could really live without it. It's fair to say that he knows what he's doing. He doesn't expect to have any real affair with Emily. He's presumably had a career in the world of women. He's had some success in that area and now I think he's got to that age when he can still cause a flutter around the house. That he can still be considered a threat I think he finds irresistibly flattering, because he's reached a certain age where his appeal is fading."