Actors always talk about taking their work home and I always think: ’What are you on? You just turn it off. You are at work and then you go home.’

Nighy is pushing back against the romanticized idea that acting requires constant emotional immersion or lingering psychological burden. The quote frames acting as a job with boundaries: you perform while you’re on set, then you stop and return to ordinary life. His blunt, slightly incredulous tone (“What are you on?”) suggests skepticism toward performative suffering or self-mythologizing within the profession. Implicitly, he values professionalism, craft, and emotional self-regulation over method-style identification with a role. The remark also hints at a healthier work–life separation, treating acting less as an all-consuming identity and more as skilled labor that can—and should—be switched off.