Nick Nolte was born in the Midwest, finding his place in high school and college as a star football player. After being kicked out of his last college because of poor grades, he decided to try his hand at acting and one of film’s most successful performers was born.
Nolte moved to Los Angeles and began studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and the Stella Adler Institute. He then proceeded to start working in guest star roles on television. His big break came when he was cast in one of the lead roles in the miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man.” The series received a huge 23 Emmy nominations and 11 of its actors were nominated in various categories, including Nolte.
That success launched Nolte into a movie career, with his first film being “The Deep,” which was a high profile expected hit since it was based on a novel by Peter Benchley, the writer of previous summer blockbuster “Jaws.” Throughout his career Nolte has amassed three Oscar nominations, one Emmy nomination and five Golden Globe nominations. He won a Golden Globe for “The Prince of Tides” directed by leading lady Barbra Streisand and was highly expected to take home the Oscar as well. Anthony Hopkins put a stop to that expectation when, despite his minimal screen time in “The Silence of the Lambs,” he asked his studio to campaign him for the lead actor award. Hopkins then pulled off a surprise upset at the Oscars.
Tour our photo gallery with his 15 greatest film performances, ranked worst to best. Our list includes the movies mentioned above plus "Affliction," "North Dally Forty," "Warrior" and more.
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15. TROPIC THUNDER (2008)
Image Credit: Dreamworks Llc/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ben Stiller. Writers: Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller, Etan Cohen. Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr.
This inventive comedy features an all-star cast playing actors who are making a war film but inadvertently find themselves having to actually become soldiers in real life. Nolte plays the author of a war memoir of his own experiences in combat. The book is actually fictitious and Nolte is revealed to not be the war hero he claims to be.
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14. AFTERGLOW (1997)
Image Credit: Moonstone/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Alan Rudolph. Starring Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller.
Nolte plays a contractor who compulsively cheats on his wife with his clients in this story of the intersecting lives of two unhappily married couples. The film was from writer-director Alan Rudolph, who has had a long history of making low budget films about loneliness and unhappy human relationships. The film gained a lot of attention for Julie Christie, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the film, which was a rare appearance in a leading role for the semi-retired actress.
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13. WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN (1978)
Image Credit: Snap/REX/Shutterstock Director: Karel Reisz. Writers: Judith Rascone and Robert Stone. Starring Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, Anthony Zerbe.
1978 was the year that Hollywood first started taking a serious look at the Vietnam war and its aftereffects on the people who served there. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” was a lower profile film that year with “The Deer Hunter” and “Coming Home” earning the lion share of attention and Oscars. (“The Deer Hunter” earned Best Picture and “Coming Home” took Best Actor and Actress for Jon Voight and Jane Fonda.) Nolte received a lot of acclaim for his role here as a Vietnam vet who gets mixed up in one of his war buddies’ heroin smuggling business. At that year’s National Society of Film Critics voting the leads of all three Vietnam war films were in contention, with Voight coming in second, Nolte third and Robert De Niro in fifth for “The Deer Hunter.” (Gary Busey won the award for “The Buddy Holly Story.”)
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12. UNDER FIRE (1983)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Roger Spottiswoode. Writer: Clayton Frohman. Starring Ed Harris, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy.
“Under Fire” was an acclaimed film about journalists in war torn Nicaragua. Nolte plays a photographer while Gene Hackman plays an anchorman. Both men are in love with another journalist played by Joanna Cassidy. Roger Ebert named the film as one of the years best and said “Nolte is great to watch as the seedy photographer.” Hackman received a Golden Globe nomination and Cassidy received a National Society of Film Critics nomination.
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11. Q & A (1990)
Image Credit: Tri-Star/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Sidney Lumet. Starring Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante, Patrick O’Neal.
Sidney Lumet was perhaps the quintessential New York City director and loved to set his films there. He had a substantial number of acclaimed hits that showcased the city’s pre-gentrified world of the 1970s and 1980s with movies such as “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “Prince of the City,” and “Network.” “Q & A” features Nolte as a tough, corrupt police detective who has killed a man and is bullying others into testifying he did it in self-defense. Timothy Hutton plays the idealistic young district attorney who is trying to bring him down. It is interesting to look at how Nolte would transform his entire look for roles. Here he is an overweight craggy cop but within a year he would transform into the blonde heartthrob of “The Prince of Tides” (which we’ll get to later on.)
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10. LORENZO’S OIL (1992)
Image Credit: Mikki Ansin/Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Miller. Writers: George Miller, Nick Enright. Starring Susan Sarandon, Peter Ustinov, Margo Martindale.
Nolte took a lot of criticism for the Italian accent he chose to use for this film, which he didn’t quite pull off. That aside, he gives a very moving performance as a father whose son develops an unusual disease that doctors can’t seem to diagnose correctly. He and his wife (Susan Sarandon in an Oscar nominated performance) find a treatment on their own with the help of other parents of suffering children.
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9. WEEDS (1987)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: John Hancock. Writer: John Hancock, Dorothy Tristan. Starring Ernie Hudson, Joe Mantegna, Rita Taggart.
Nolte earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his performance in this prison drama. He plays a man sentenced to life without parole for committing armed robbery. He falls into a suicidal depression but is drawn out of it by seeing a production of “Waiting for Godot.” The play inspires him to write his own plays, which then draws the attention of people on the outside who try to get him paroled.
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8. CAPE FEAR (1991)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Martin Scorsese. Writer: Wesley Strick. Starring Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis.
“Cape Fear” was a highly successful 1962 film starring Robert Mitchum as a rapist paroled from prison who comes after the lawyer (Gregory Peck) whom he feels caused his incarceration. Thirty years later Martin Scorsese remade the film with Robert De Niro in the Mitchum role and Nick Nolte in the Peck part. (Mitchum and Peck also both have cameo roles in the remake.) Nolte had been playing a lot of transformative roles at this point in his career so it is interesting to see him as an ordinary clean-cut family man in this movie. De Niro and Juliette Lewis both earned Oscar nominations for their performances.
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7. 48 HRS. (1982)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Walter Hill. Writers: Roger Spottiswoode, Walter Hill, Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza. Starring Eddie Murphy, Annette O’Toole, David Patrick Kelly.
Nolte had his first true blockbuster with this film about a cop teaming with a prisoner who is paroled for 48 hours to help the cop solve a case. (Nolte had a modest blockbuster a few years before with “The Deep” but despite strong box office the film was considered a bit of a failure since it didn’t match author Peter Benchley’s previous screen adaptation “Jaws”—-and Jacqueline Bisset’s wet T-shirt got much more attention than him.) This film proved a huge hit for all involved in large part due to the casting of Eddie Murphy, who had just started on “Saturday Night Live,” in the role of the paroled convict. Director Walter Hill wanted the film to have an improvisational feel and that worked perfectly for Murphy, who was allowed to wisecrack his way to movie stardom.
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6. DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS (1986)
Image Credit: Touchstone/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Paul Mazursky. Writers: Paul Mazursky, Leon Capetanos. Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Bette Midler, Little Richard.
“Down and Out in Beverly Hills” was a surprise smash hit in January 1986 and managed to revive the careers of all three of its stars. Prior to its release Nolte hadn’t made a film in two years, Richard Dreyfuss hadn’t done one in three years and it was four years since Bette Midler had appeared on screen. The three had all suffered personal demons during those years and some nicknamed them the Betty Ford kids after the famous drug rehabilitation center many Hollywood stars were attending at the time. (Although to be accurate, unlike Nolte and Dreyfuss, Midler wasn’t suffering from addiction at this time and never liked that she was lumped in with this label.) The film is a remake of the classic Jean Renoir French film “Boudu Saved from Drowning.” Nolte stars as a desperate homeless man who tries to kill himself in a rich Beverly Hills couple’s pool. They then take him into their home and he proceeds to change all of their lives.
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5. THE THIN RED LINE (1998)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Terrence Malick. Starring Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, George Clooney.
Director Terrence Malick made two highly acclaimed films in the 1970s (“Badlands” and “Days of Heaven”) and then disappeared from filmmaking for 20 years. When he returned to directing for this WWII drama he had his pick of actors since his reputation was such that everyone wanted to work with him. The film had a starry cast featuring Sean Penn, John Cusack, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, John Travolta, George Clooney, and John Savage. Nolte managed to give the film’s most acclaimed performance though and was a nominee for Best Supporting Actor at the Chicago Film Festival Awards. Nolte plays a Lieutenant Colonel leading one of the battles at Guadalcanal. The film itself received seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture.
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4. NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ted Kotcheff. Writers: Frank Yablans, Ted Kotcheff, Peter Gent. Starring Mac Davis, Charles Durning, Steve Forrest.
Nolte himself was a successful football player in high school and college so it isn’t surprising that he seemed right at home in this film about the sport. “North Dallas Forty” is probably one of the most realistic depictions of life in the NFL ever put on film. Nolte received a lot of critical acclaim and was in third place in the voting for Best Actor at both the New York and National Society of Film Critics Awards. That was quite an honor since he was in very tough competition with only two classic performances (Dustin Hoffman in “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and Peter Sellers in “Being There”) coming out ahead of him. Sadly, the critical acclaim did not carry over to an Oscar nomination.
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3. WARRIOR (2011)
Image Credit: Solaris/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Gavin O’Connor. Writers: Gavin O’Connor, Anthony Tambakis, Cliff Dorfman. Starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Morrison.
Nolte earned his first Oscar nomination in the Supporting Actor category as well as a SAG nomination and a bunch of critic’s awards citations for this film set in the world of mixed martial arts. He plays an alcoholic ex-boxer whose addiction drove his family apart. While one of his sons left with his mother the other stayed behind with him. The two brothers both find themselves in the same tournament where old sibling wounds play out in the ring.
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2. AFFLICTION (1998)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Paul Schrader. Starring James Coburn, Sissy Spacek, Mary Beth Hurt.
Nolte received his second Best Actor Oscar nomination for this adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Russell Banks, written and directed by noted filmmaker Paul Schrader. He plays a cop investigating a hunting accident while slowly having a mental breakdown due in large part to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father (Best Supporting Actor winner James Coburn). Nolte won the New York and National Society of Film Critics Awards as Best Actor.
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1. THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Barbra Streisand. Writers: Pat Conroy, Becky Johnston. Starring Barbra Streisand, Kate Nelligan, Blythe Danner.
Nolte had his most acclaimed role in this adaptation of the popular novel by Pat Conroy of the same name. He plays a football coach who travels to New York City after his sister tries to kill herself. There he meets his sister’s doctor (director Barbra Streisand) with whom he falls in love as she tries to help he and his sister face their family’s dark past. Nolte won the Golden Globe for Best Drama Actor for this film and was considered the favorite going into that year’s Oscars. He was beaten though by Anthony Hopkins for “The Silence of the Lambs.” It has long been debated why Hopkins with his limited screen time was placed in the lead actor category but that was a choice he made and it paid off for him to Nolte’s disadvantage.
Nolte should receive an Oscar Lifetime Achievement award.