It was only seven years ago that Nolte was dubbed ““the sexiest man alive’’ by People magazine, after his performance in Barbra Streisand’s ““The Prince of Tides.’’ That wimpy accolade was surpassed this year when both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics named him best actor for ““Affliction.’’ The film, based on Russell Banks’s novel, is as close to Greek tragedy as movies come. His performance evokes the pity and terror that Aristotle identified as the key ingredients in tragic drama. Brutalized as a boy by his drunken father, Nolte’s Wade embodies the repressed violence transmitted from father to son. Add to that the ferocious Colonel Tall, and you have the Darwinian philosophy that is an article of belief for Nolte. ““There’s this violence that’s in us that’s partly genetic and partly taught,’’ he says. ““In this century more wars than ever killed more people than ever. You say, “It’s them over there, it’s drugs, it’s this or that.’ But it might be indigenous to mankind.''
In a way Nolte recalls the great expressionist actors of the ’20s, like Emil Jannings, who spoke with their bodies in silent movies. But Nolte is more subtle. After the battle in ““Thin Red Line,’’ the colonel’s face literally collapses from an exhaustion that’s both physical and psychological. It’s an unforgettable image. Wade’s agonizing toothache in ““Affliction’’ is also an expression of his angry pain at his loser’s life. Nolte, legendary for his detailed research and preparation, had four progressively larger prosthetic teeth made, which he popped in as the ache got worse, ““to give me a reality of something in my mouth.’’ For his role as a sadistic detective in Sidney Lumet’s 1990 ““Q&A,’’ Nolte wore shoes with six-inch lifts. ““I was literally 6 foot 6,’’ he says. ““And I had them pitched so that I could not lean backwards. So whenever I was talking to somebody I was right in their face.''
Paul Schrader loves the way Nolte ““is able to show this man’s mind working. You can see him adding up one and one and getting three.’’ For a long time in his own life Nolte, now 57, was adding up one and one and getting three, or maybe minus three. Born in Omaha, Neb., Nolte bounced around various colleges and didn’t avoid his generation’s near-compulsory trip into drugs and booze. In 1962 he was convicted of selling counterfeit draft cards and received a suspended sentence of five years. He has said that it was seeing a production of Arthur Miller’s ““Death of a Salesman’’ that changed his life. ““Acting was a savior for me,’’ he says. ““I’m not comfortable in life. It’s a little scary for me, it’s a little too violent. I had to grow up with the idea of the atomic bomb. So psychologically when I saw a play I realized that you not only can see and read this play but you could be in it. At that time I was going through some heavy questioning of self and everything else. At the same time I’m reading Stanislavski’s “An Actor Prepares,’ and I’m saying that’s the exact process I’m going through right now. So I went and got in a play. I was petrified going onstage. But the minute I hit out there I knew I was home.''
Work in rep companies led to television, and in 1976, at 35, he won an Emmy for his portrayal of the wastrel Tom Jordache in the mini-series ““Rich Man, Poor Man.’’ That led to a series of film roles including the drug-smuggling Vietnam veteran in ““Who’ll Stop the Rain,’’ the disaffected pro football player in ““North Dallas Forty’’ and his big box- office breakthrough as the cop opposite Eddie Murphy in the 1982 ““48 HRS.’’ In the 1984 ““Grace Quigley,’’ his costar, Katharine Hepburn, said to him, ““I hear you’ve been dead drunk in every gutter in town, and it has to stop.’’ ““I can’t stop, I’ve got a few more gutters to go,’’ answered Nolte. In 1986 he put those gutters to good use as a homeless man opposite Bette Midler in Paul Mazursky’s comedy ““Down and Out in Beverly Hills.’’ Mazursky recalls how Nolte’s penchant for realistic detail led Midler to complain, ““Method is one thing, but he stinks!’’ Mazursky’s comment, both amused and admiring, is, ““I’m telling you, Nick goes very, very deep.''
This desire for depth led to Nolte’s disaffection from the big-bucks mentality of mainstream Hollywood. Movies like ““I Love Trouble’’ (1994), in which he and Julia Roberts failed to revive ’40s-style romantic comedy, literally disheartened the actor. ““You become what they call “hot’ and these wads of money come at you and this dance, this seduction takes place, and you forget why you act. I would actually get a heart murmur if I was working on a film that I knew I was in for the wrong reason. It would go ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. So I went to the heart specialist.’’ The doctor’s diagnosis was simple: ““You’re doing something you don’t want to do.''
Since then Nolte has stayed away from the ba-boom movies. In 1996 he did ““Mother Night,’’ a Kurt Vonnegut adaptation about the dark days of Nazism, and in 1997 ““Afterglow,’’ costarring with a radiant Julie Christie as a couple with big marital problems. Alan Rudolph, who directed him in ““Afterglow’’ and in the upcoming ““Breakfast of Champions’’ (another Vonnegut adaptation), says, ““Nick is just growing. He recognizes that there are darlings and demons in every one of us, and he wants to roll around in the mud with his. Nick is a superstar–but it’s on his own terms.’’ Today Nolte, a veteran of three divorces, a recovering alcoholic in great shape, lives in his Malibu compound with TV actress Vicki Lewis. In ““Breakfast of Champions,’’ Nolte plays a cross-dresser. He took the role on one condition. The sexiest man emeritus insisted on designing his own dress.
No actor has a wider range than Nolte. He’s been a tough-funny cop, a homeless roamer, a hard-driving WWII colonel and an inheritor of family violence.
