All aboard to salute pirates

Bill Nighy says the Radio Caroline DJs became musical outlaws whose love of music kept them going. Photo / Supplied

After concentrating on affairs of the heart for his previous films, writer Richard Curtis has turned his attention to a different kind of romance in The Boat That Rocked, in cinemas on Thursday. Set on a British pirate radio ship in the middle of the North Sea in 1967, it explores the sometimes obsessive passion that many people feel for a good tune.

"As Richard says, it's entirely to do with the music," says Bill Nighy, who plays Radio Rock's owner Quentin. "The movie is entirely inspired by Richard's love of music and that period. It's a big deal for everybody, that time when you choose what kind of music you like. For me, it coincided with a real explosion in electric music. It's also about friendship, the kind of platonic attachment that can build up between people when they get thrown together and have to get along.

"There's also romance and some girls as well. It's a big, friendly, hopefully funny movie."

Unlike Curtis' best-known efforts - Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually - where the women share top billing with the men, women take a backseat in The Boat That Rocked. Some critics have accused the film of sexism because, with the exception of resident lesbian chef Felicity (Katherine Parkinson), the rest are mostly young girls who appear only fleetingly, visiting the ship to party and sleep with the DJs.

But Nighy is defiant. "It's about blokes and girls," he says. "Any movie that has got January Jones (Mad Men) and Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace) in it is doing okay in terms of girls, in my view. It was an odd, regretful feeling to marry January Jones to someone else because in my personal mythology she's completely adorable."

Radio Rock is based on Radio Caroline, the most famous of Britain's unlicensed stations that broadcast from international waters from 1964 until it was shut down in 1968.

"It must have been odd because they were mobbed by women when they went ashore," Nighy says. "They became musical heroes but they were also outlaw heroes. The reality of their lives was that they spent most of their time at sea girl-less. It must have been quite gruelling because the North Sea is not particularly friendly. You hope that your love of music will see you through."

According to the 59-year-old actor, the so-called Swinging 60s was a media-created myth. "I don't like the idea of people of our generation telling the young that it was better then, because it wasn't. Some beautiful music was made during the 60s and some truly awful records were also made, just like always."

Curtis, 52, left his home city of Wellington nearly a decade before the founding of New Zealand's own illicit floating radio station, Radio Hauraki. But many of Radio Caroline's DJs hailed from Downunder. "When they started the stations, they didn't have any English disc jockeys who knew how to do the job so they got people from Australia, New Zealand and America to come over," says Curtis, who reflects that background in the character of Angus, an obnoxious Kenny Everett-type DJ played by The Flight of the Conchords Rhys Darby.

"Rhys claimed that he was voted the New Zealander of the Year last year, although it was his character, not him," laughs Curtis. "I don't know what position he was at. He was delightful to work with."

The ensemble cast includes Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt), Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill) and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) as Radio Rock's leading DJs, and Kenneth Branagh as the station's nemesis - government minister Sir Alastair Dormandy. No one actor steals the limelight. "One of the things that we did on the film was to try to create a genuine bond between everyone," says Curtis. "We had this boat camp and we all lived on the boat under horrible conditions with lots of candles to hide the smell of goulash."

Surrey-born Nighy spent two decades mostly taking on television and theatrical roles before rising to international prominence in 2003 playing washed-up rock star Billy Mack in his first collaboration with Curtis, Love Actually. The pair reunited in 2005 for the BBC play The Girl in the Cafe.

"I love working with Richard more than any other director," he says. "You know that if you're in one of his films half the world will see it, which is not always the case with all movies. It's a kind of event - a benign event, and people love it. Barely a day goes past when people don't come up to me and say Love Actually has made them feel better. Several times they've said Love Actually got me through my chemotherapy or my boyfriend leaving me. They have Love Actually hen parties in America, where they break out the wine and sing along."

Since that film, Nighy has played the villainous Davy Jones in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean instalments, which saw him getting an even bigger soaking than during The Boat That Rocked's climax.

"For 12 weeks we didn't do anything but wet work," he says. "With this, we also got very wet for several weeks, but for most of the rest of the time we were off the coast of Dorset. It was springtime so it was very beautiful. "Occasionally they'd say dance all day and on one particular occasion it was to Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street. "So we'd all be throwing shapes all over the ship to some of our favourite songs. It was hard work but we had some laughs."

Nighy was also vampire elder Viktor in the three Underworld movies, including the recent prequel Rise of the Lycans, which was partly filmed in New Zealand last year.

"I'd not been there before," he says. "It was a really cool place to make a movie. I could settle there with no trouble at all. I really liked it. There's a really nice vibe in Auckland. If you live in London, it's like a dream. Saturday night in Auckland, you wonder if there's been a bomb scare. You can walk around easily and everything tastes good. I'd love to make another film there."

* The Boat That Rocked is out in cinemas Thursday.