Nick Nolte is an American actor. His films include The Deep (1977), 48 Hrs. (1982), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Another 48 Hrs. (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), Cape Fear (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Affliction (1997), The Thin Red Line (1998), Hulk (2003), The Good Thief (2003), and Warrior (2011).
Background
Ethnicity:
His ancestry includes German, English, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, and Swiss. His paternal grandfather, who was of German descent, was a farmer with a farm in Iowa.
Nicholas King "Nick" Nolte was born on February 8, 1941.
Nolte has been married three times. His ex-wives are Sheila Page, Sharyn Haddad and Rebecca Linger, with whom he has a son named Brawley Nolte (born June 20, 1986). His son is also an actor, having been prominently featured as Mel Gibson's kidnapped son in Ransom. Nolte was also involved with Debra Winger and Vicki Lewis. On October 3, 2007, his longtime partner, Clytie Lane, gave birth to their daughter, Sophie Lane Nolte.
Nolte currently resides in Malibu, California. On October 6, 2008, a fire, which started from a computer printer, burned a section of his home. He escaped unharmed, but there was reportedly $1.5 million worth of damage.
Born at 7:00pm-CST.
Trade Mark:
Frequently plays crazed and unstable characters.
Cold unsettling stare.
Husky voice.
He, along with Christopher Walken, were both considered for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars (1977).
In 1962, Nolte was given five years probation for selling fake draft cards.
In 1978 Karen Ecklund, his girlfriend of 5 years, sued him for community property and support.
Nolte gained 50 pounds for his role in Q & A (1990).
Lives in Malibu, California.
Nolte was a heavy drinker until 1990. When Katharine Hepburn accused him of falling down drunk in every gutter in town, he replied: "I've got a few to go yet."
In 1992, he was chosen as People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.
In September 2002, he checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut for counseling after he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Malibu, California, a few days earlier. Tests later showed that he was under the influence of GHB, the "date rape" drug.
12 December 2002, he pleaded no contest to charges of driving under the influence. He was given 3-years' probation with orders to undergo alcohol and drug counseling with random testing required.
His career started in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Eleanor Moore Agency as a model for print ads.
Turned down the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Was considered for the role of Superman/Clark Kent in Superman (1978).
Visited Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia, 8/2006)
#1 of VH1's "40 Most Shocking Celebrity Mugshots" - had a Hawaiin shirt and a bed-head.
Education
He was the kicker on the football team in Westside High School.
Nolte originally attended Benson High, but got kicked out for a fight and hiding beer before practice and then getting caught drinking it during a practice session.
He played college football for Arizona State University.
He attended Pasadena City College in southern California, and Arizona State University in Tempe (on a football scholarship); Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher; and Phoenix College in Phoenix. At Eastern Arizona, Nolte lettered in football as a tight end and defensive end, in basketball as a forward, and as a catcher on the baseball team.
Career
Modelling:
Nolte was a model in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In one national magazine advertisement in 1972, he appeared in jeans and an open jean shirt for Clairol's "Summer Blonde" hair lightener sitting on a log next to a blonde Sigourney Weaver.The pair also appeared on the packaging.
Acting career:
Nolte first gained national attention and critical acclaim for his performance in Rich Man, Poor Man, a 1976 television miniseries based on Irwin Shaw's 1970 best-selling novel. Since then he's appeared in more than 40 films, playing a wide variety of characters. Diversity of character, and his trademark athleticism and gravelly voice, are signatures of Nolte's career. In 1973 he appeared in Lorne Greene's ABC crime drama Griff in the episode "Who Framed Billy the Kid?", in the role of Billy Randolph, a football player accused of murder. He co-starred alongside Andy Griffith in Winter Kill, a television film made as the pilot of a possible television series, and another one, Adams of Eagle Lake, but neither was picked up as a series.
Nolte's first major film role was starring opposite Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Shaw in 1977's The Deep. He followed this with Who'll Stop the Rain in 1978 and North Dallas Forty, based on the Peter Gent novel, in 1979. In 1980, he appeared, in an uncredited cameo, in The Shining as "man in bear suit." The 1982 buddy cop/convict film 48 Hrs. strongly bolstered his film career and made his co-star Eddie Murphy a box-office sensation. He continued starring in films throughout the 1980s, including Under Fire (1983) with Gene Hackman, Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) with Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler, Extreme Prejudice (1987) and New York Stories (1989) under the direction of Martin Scorsese.
He began the 1990s working with Murphy again in the sequel Another 48 Hours. Nolte had perhaps his greatest box office success in 1991, starring in The Prince of Tides with Barbra Streisand, for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Though he lost to Anthony Hopkins for The Silence of the Lambs, he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. That same year he starred in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange.
Nolte's solid work continued with Lorenzo's Oil (1992) opposite Susan Sarandon, Mulholland Falls (1996), and Afterglow (1997) for which his co-star Julie Christie received her third Academy Award nomination. He received his second Academy Award nomination the same year for his work in Affliction, but lost to Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful. However, Nolte's co-star, James Coburn, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing the father of Nolte's character. That same year, Nolte starred in Terrence Malick's highly anticipated war epic The Thin Red Line as Colonel Tall.
Nolte continued to work through the 2000s, taking smaller parts in Clean and Hotel Rwanda; both performances received positive reviews. He also played supporting roles in the 2006 drama Peaceful Warrior and the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder. In 2011, Nolte portrayed recovering alcoholic Paddy Conlon, dealing with his two estranged sons competing in an MMA tournament in the film Warrior, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
He starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the 2012 HBO TV series Luck, which in spite of being renewed for a second season after only one episode, was cancelled by HBO in March 2012 due to the death of three horses during filming.
Views
Quotations:
Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.
I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.
America is in a difficult position right now. It has so much wealth, it has become obese and gluttonous. It will change but it has to get through this time now. It's not that I wish I was not from America. It just goes through these peculiar times. I could live anywhere. But I wouldn't want to abandon a country just because it's being silly. I'll do what we did in 1968, and try and change it and get some sense into it.
You convince yourself you can fix the screenplay, because there's a lot of money involved. But you can never make it work. If the script has a hole in it, it will always have that hole.
I didn't stay in a popular vein. I never really got stamped like that. I worked very hard to keep changing my image.
If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.