Although he was 36 when he finally got a breakthrough role, Nick Nolte went on to become one of the most popular and gifted of Hollywood's leading men. Combining physical toughness with a vulnerable sensitivity, he usually portrays a macho character who is undone by his own feelings and who is at odds with society. A high school football star who won athletic scholarships to Arizona State University, among others, Nick Nolte cut his academic career short by being expelled for poor grades at more than one institution of higher learning.
When he was 21 years old, he was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in jail for selling fake draft cards, but the sentence was suspended. After his poor academic career, he moved to California. He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and then at Stella Adler's Academy in Los Angeles, where his mentor was Bryan O'Byrne. For 14 years, he worked in regional theater, television films (Death Sentence, 1974), and such "B" movies as Return to Macon County (1975). When he was cast as Tom Jordache in Rich Man, Poor Man, a television miniseries, he received an Emmy nomination for his performance, his first big break.
This led to his costarring role with Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep (1977), which was followed by New York Film Critics Circle nominations for Best Actor in Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978), as a disillusioned Vietnam War vet, and North Dallas Forty (1979), playing a disillusioned wide receiver modeled after Pete Gent, the author of the book on which the film was based. Though Heart Beat (1980) was a box-office disappointment, Nick Nolte was effective as Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac's friend. He was much more successful in his first "buddy" film, 48 Hrs. (1982), which paired him with EDDIE MURPHY in a cop drama rife with Murphy humor. Essentially, it was an "odd couple" (ebullient, irrepressible Murphy and dour, world-weary Nick Nolte) film so successful that the two would reprise their roles eight years later in Another 48 Hrs.
In the eight years between the two films with Murphy, Nick Nolte appeared in several films, most of them undistinguished, and it was also during this period that he had some problems with alcohol. For every Weeds (1987), there were two or three Grace Quigleys (1984). In 1991 in The Prince of Tides, he was the brother of BARBRA STREISAND's patient, still traumatized by being raped at 13. For his performance, he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and was nominated for Best Actor awards by the academy and by the New York Film Critics Circle. Since then, he has had a string of successful film roles and garnered critical praise.
Assuming the role that GREGORY PECK had played in the original Cape Fear (1961), Nick Nolte held his own against the threatening ROBERT DE NIRO in the remake (1991). In Lorenzo's Oil (1992) he and SUSAN SARANDON (who earned an Academy Best Actress nomination for her performance) were cast as the parents of a child with ALD (adrenoleukodystrophy), and in the Merchant–Ivory Jefferson in Paris (1994), he had the title role in a film that explored the alleged sexual relationship between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. Blue Chips (1994) provided Nick Nolte with a different kind of role. As coach Pete Bell (a Bobby Knight type), he was an idealist whose code was compromised by the pressures of university alumni.
Nick Nolte's next important role was as Sheriff Wade Whitehouse in Affliction (1997); he was also the executive producer of that film. As the small-town sheriff intent on doing the right thing but usually failing, Nick Nolte was again playing the flawed idealist frustrated and defeated by his own feelings and failings. He was also again nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The following year, he was one of the many stars in the epic war film The Thin Red Line and also appeared in Nightwatch.
Other important roles were in the film adaptation of Henry James's The Golden Bowl (2001); The Hulk (2003), in which he played the father of the comic-book hero; and The Good Thief (2003), in which he was an aging gangster and gambler plotting a casino heist, with predictable results. Nick Nolte has slogged his way across the existential terrain of many a movie, toughing out the drug complications of Who'll Stop the Rain, for example. Lee Tamahori, who directed him in Mulholland Falls (1995), described Nolte as "one of the finest actors in American cinema."
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