NICK NOLTE - BURYING HIS DEMONS
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by Harold von Kursk
GQ EUROPEAN EDITIONS
LOS ANGELES - No actor is as skilled at playing
tormented souls as Nick Nolte. His face, craggy and
lined, is a study in painful exhaustion. That
exhaustion was nowhere more evident than in the police
mug shot photos that were taken of Nolte on Sept. 11,
2002 after the California Highway Patrol had pulled
him over for erratic driving. It was literally the end
of the road for Nick, who admittedly had been on a
drugs and alcohol bender for over a year prior to his
arrest. Pleading "no contest" to two charges of
reckless endangerment and driving while intoxicated,
he immediately checked himself into a rehab clinic in
Connecticut and received three years' probation for
his trouble. But today Nolte is happy to admit that
he's resumed a healthy lifestyle and rehabbed himself
to clean living.
His new film, THE HULK, is one of the few times in
Nolte's career that he's chosen to appear in a
traditional Hollywood blockbuster. Nolte, 62, did the
film as much for the money as for his curiosity about
the way a film like this gets made. He's happier today
than he's been for a long, long time, and he is truly
convinced that years of self-doubt and anguish have
faded into dust, and that he's willingly settled into
a less tortured and abusive lifestyle.
Ironically, Nolte had already undergone something of a
physical if not spiritual rebirth during the nineties.
Long heralded as one the greatest drinkers in
Hollywood since the days of John Barrymore, twelve
years ago Nolte walked into his first meeting of AA
(Alcoholics Anonymous) in Los Angeles, and that made
him swear off booze and drugs forever - until the last
year when he went back to altering his body chemistry.
In fact, Nolte is currently on a profound health kick
and taking ample amounts of vitamins and other health
food supplements which he claims are helping repair
some of the damage that he's done to his body because
of his various addictions. He claims that he hasn't
felt so strong and healthy since his days football
player at Arizona State University.
Nolte feels that only in the last few years has he
finally rescued himself from a mid-life crisis when he
experienced profound disillusionment about his acting
and about his relationships with women.
Married and divorced three times, he has no more idea
of where his life and career are headed today than he
was during the 'seventies, a raucous period when he
was often lost in an alcohol and cocaine haze. But the
days of overindulgence are long gone, declares Nolte,
who decided that he didn't want to wind up "dead and
buried before my time."
His career as an actor took off when he happened to be
playing in a William Inge play, The Last Pad, in Los
Angeles, in 1973, when the author committed suicide
four days before the play was scheduled to complete it
run. Everyone in Hollywood went to see it and they
were enthralled by Nolte's performance, which led to
his being signed by a major Hollywood agency
Celebrity first landed on Nolte's shoulders when he
played Tom Jordache, the blonde hunk in Rich Man,
Poor Man, the highly-rated 1976 U.S. miniseries. That
was followed by a starring role in The Deep [1977],
only to be upstaged by Jacqueline Bisset's t-shirted
breast and nipple performance. Nolte so detested that
film that he spend much of his time getting drunk with
co-star Robert Shaw. At the end of the day's
shooting, Nolte would drop his pants and announce,
"cocktail time."
Perhaps the most entertaining and endearing of all
badly behaving celebrities is Nick Nolte, the
hard-drinking, hard-partying actor who has spent most
of his Hollywood years boozing his way through life.
He was famously scolded by Katherine Hepburn who was
co-starring with Nolte in a film. "If you don't stop
drinking and clean up your act, you're going to wind
up in the gutter!"
To which Nolte replied: "I know, but I've got a few
gutters left to explore."
Nolte was looking tanned and relaxed when I met him
last month in L.A. Entering the deserted Caffé Roma
late one afternoon, Nolte spoke at length of how he is
happy to have worked on films on Neil Jordan's THE
GOOD THIEF during the past year, and admits "having a
blast" on the set of THE HULK. Though he is separated
from long-time girlfriend Vicki, Nolte remains a
dedicated father to his 15-year-old son Brawley, who
has already appeared in several films, including Mel
Gibson's "Ransom."
THE INTERVIEW
Q. Nick, how do you feel these days?
NOLTE: I'm pretty happy right now. I'm not boozing, I
have a lot of good films coming up...Things are good.
Q: How difficult have things been for you since your
highly-publicised arrest last year?
NOLTE: Getting arrested was the best thing that ever
could have happened to me. Being out on the road drunk
and driving isn't a good thing, and I'm glad I didn't
have an accident. I was relieved when the (police)
siren came on because I knew it was over -- the
substance abuse, that is. It was the kind of wake-up
call you need.
Q: You were very proud a few years ago about having
stopped drinking for many years. What went wrong?
NOLTE: I'd been sober for ten years before I started
up again with drugs and booze last year. That's just
part of the problem about substance abuse: it appears
at times I'm on top of it, and suddenly, you decide
you've earned yourself a drink, and pretty soon, you
feel down about something, and you tell yourself
you've earned yourself a bottle of vodka or whatever.
And that's how it starts and it's very hard to to get
back of that kind of pattern of abuse because you're
just so lost in your own self-pity and stupidity.
That's the trouble with being a screwed-up artist!
Q: What do you think of that famous photo of you in
the Hawaiian shirt taken after your arrest?
NOLTE: I thought it was one of my finest performances.
(Laughs) God, did I ever look wrecked. Hell, I was
wrecked! (Laughs)
Q: Did your arrest make you determined to get help?
NOLTE: Oh, man, did it ever. After the arrest, I
checked himself into a rehab clinic and I've been
living a very healthy lifestyle, mentally and
physically, ever since.
Q: Let's talk about THE HULK. It's not the typical
Nick Nolte film in the sense that you've studiously
done a lot of acclaimed art house films in recent
years like AFFLICTION, SIMPATICO, and most recently,
Neil Jordan's THE GOOD THIEF.
NOLTE: You're right. The main point was that I knew
and respected the work of the director, Ang Lee (THE
ICE STORM, SENSE & SENSIBILITY) I also kind of liked
the concept of THE HULK because it was about this
whole dark side to THE HULK and what he represented as
some kind of horrific byproduct of the human
personality who is also very human and benevolent at
the same time.
(ED NOTE: The Hulk is the giant green-skinned monster
into which a military scientist, Bruce Banner, played
by BLACK HAWN DOWN's Eric Bana, is transformed after
an experiment goes wrong and he is exposed to gamma
rays.)
I play Bruce's father and although I can't give it
away, I might not be such a nice guy. But that's all
I'm saying.
Q: What else struck you about making this film?
NOLTE: Well, I loved staring at Jennifer Connelly's
ass! (Laughs) No, I hadn't made one of these big
Hollywood films in a while and as much as the money
was good, I loved being on this huge set and getting
very pampered treatment. I had a blast doing the film.
Q: Do you often get offered big films like THE HULK?
NOLTE: Yeah, pretty often. But I usually hate the
horrible sentimentality and easy solutions Hollywood
finds to problems in big commercial films. There's
almost no room or point to do any serious acting in
those kinds of stories, so generally I'm not
interested in participating in that kind of
destruction of human sensibility and honest emotions.
Q: Why do you think people appreciate your work so
much?
NOLTE: I think people must sense that I'm not an
asshole or one of those vain actors who only cares
about how the lighting makes him look. I don't like
playing bullshit hero types even though I could always
make ten times more money if I did parts like that. If
people think that Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford
represent life, that's fine.
But that's a very superficial level of reality. I
haven't always succeeded, I've done my fair share of
Hollywood garbage, but for the most part I've been
playing real people rather than a bunch of slick
heroes. I try not to feed the popcorn culture.
Q: What do you think of the $20 million salaries that
are paid to top stars like Cruise, Ford, Hanks, and
others?
NOLTE: It's obscene when you consider that the overall
budgets of most movies is only about $60 or $70
million. Those these stars are commanding one-third of
the budgets on some of these films and that leaves
much less money to make the actual movie and very
little money to pay the supporting cast members.
Audiences don't even realise the incredible squeeze on
the pay scale of supporting actors over the last ten
years because the top stars are getting paid so much.
I'm lucky in that I sort of operate in a middle ground
between star and supporting actor, so I still earn
good money. But it's very tough on otherwise
incredibly good supporting actors who are often far
better actors than the so-called stars.
Q: When you were a Hollywood wild man, what was the
basic impulse driving you?
NOLTE: Impulse? I wanted to destroy myself. It was
like I felt that I didn't deserve to be making big
money and playing the movie star. And alcohol simply
exaggerated all my delusions. I thought it was cool to
be rich, handsome, and drunk all the time. But
underneath all that I was the unhappiest man alive.
Q: What finally made you stop drinking?
NOLTE: There comes a point when you don't like feeling
sick to death every morning and not remembering where
you were or who you fucked the previous night. It's
like living in the twilight zone. So after awhile it
sunk into me that if I wanted to die, fine, I'll keep
drinking. Or, maybe, I could stop drinking, stop the
process of self-destruction, go to AA, and try to be a
decent human being.
Q: Do you regret all the years you spent in an
alcoholic haze?
NOLTE: Well, I had a lot of fun along the way. I
wasn't a mean drunk. I didn't take pleasure in getting
into fights or being rude to people.
But I'm sure a lot of the people who were around me in
those days wouldn't say very many nice things about
me. I could be rude and opinionated and not very easy
to work with. But when you're drunk, you don't realize
how obnoxious and stupid you can be. But what the
hell, I don't remember half the stuff I did! (Laughs)
Q: Do you think you could have made a lot better
movies if you had been sober?
NOLTE: Hell, yes. I made myself public enemy No. 1 to
a lot of directors and studios. For years I couldn't
get the big parts that I knew I should have had. It's
a miracle that I did any good work at all. But
somehow I was good enough that people were willing to
hire me even if I was a bit of a pain in the neck.
Q: You've had a lot of ups and downs with women in
your life?
NOLTE: Yeah. But eventually they got fed up with my
alternative lifestyle of screwing, boozing, and
staying out until five in the morning without
mentioning what I was doing or with whom I was doing
it with.
Q: Is it true that you turned down Schrader when he
first approached you to play in Affliction, the movie
that earned you an Oscar nomination in 1999?
NOLTE: Yeah. I told him I had gone through the script
over and over and I felt that I wasn't ready to feel
that kind of pain. It took me a few months of hard
thinking and self-analysis to bring myself to the
point where I believed I could the character real.
Q. Has your lifelong sense of insecurity come from
having spent your childhood without seeing your father
that much because he was travelling the country as a
salesman?
NOLTE: Some of it, I'm sure. I missed my dad a lot
because sometimes I would have loved to throw a
football or baseball with him and he just wasn't home.
That killed me a little inside and so I did grow up
with a bit of a hurt because of that. But I think the
main reason I drank was that I liked it so much and
because it was so fucking boring in Omaha, Nebraska
(the midwestern city where Nolte spent his teenage
years -NLDR). I was dying from a lack of stimulation
and a lack of challenge. That's a big problem for a
lot of teenagers who grow up in small towns or cities
where you find yourself alienated from what you feel
life should be about. When I was in high school, I
just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do in
life, what was important. So I kind of drifted and
found a lot of satisfaction in sports, mainly
football.
Q. How good an athlete were you?
Nolte: I was strong and fast. I played a lot of
quarterback in high school until they kicked me off
the team for drinking. My family then moved across
town so that I could play football at another school.
My mom and dad and sister always supported me even
when I was behaving like an idiot, so I don't blame
any of my problems on them. Hell, I was just born
crazy.
Q. You've had a long career despite your years of
wanton excess. How did you hold your life together
and keep acting?
NOLTE: Persistence. I'm a survivor. I had an enormous
capacity for alcohol. I don't think anyone has ever
been able to drink me under the table. Another
problem for me, in a way, was that I liked to drink, I
had fun drinking because it kept me from thinking
about why I felt so useless and helpless in life. I
was a little bit like like the guy I played in Price
of Tides, a man who didn't want to think about what
might have been bothering him deep down. I suffered a
lot of bad mood swings which were obviously aggravated
by my drinking and a lot of the drugs I was taking in
the 'seventies and 'eighties. I was hell to live with
at times.
The problem is that I'm an addict. And when you're an
addict you're going to be battling your addictions
mentally even when you're not hooked physiologically.
It's a constant battle. Not in the sense that you
worry abotu taking a drink or doing drugs every day,
but that in your weak moments, when you're depressed,
when life doesn't look so good, that's when you have
to fight the impulse to go back to the bottle or
whatever.
Q. What's better about your life today. Are you more
in touch with your own feelings about what you think
is important in life or the types of films you want to
make?
NOLTE: The biggest change is not waking up in the
morning with a hangover anymore. When I turned 50, I
had got to the point where I couldn't remember where I
had been or what I had done the night before.
I was also feeling really sick the day. When I was
younger, I never had too much of a problem recovering
from heavy drinking. I drank as much as I could until
I passed out or I felt I couldn't walk out of the bar
by myself.
But when you can't handle the fallout anymore, you
know it's time to give it up or you're just going to
wind up dead in the gutter. Drinking was going to
kill me. I just decided that I had to sober up and do
something different with my life. I decided to be less
of an asshole.
Q: Do you worry about your health?
NOLTE: Sure I do. The problem with getting older is
that even though on the inside you feel young, your
body is falling apart piece by piece and everything
gets a little harder to do physically. Right now I'm
on this extreme health and fitness regimen with
vitamins and a lot of other good stuff that I'm using
to try and regenerate this broken down body of mine.
My goal is to become a healthy old-timer although I'm
not sure that that's a realistic goal considering the
abuse I've put my body through.
Q. Have you answered any of the big questions that
you may have been struggling about all these years?
Nolte: I think I've found out that life is more
interesting if you're able to confront it rather than
escape from it. It's a lot tougher, it's a lot more
painful to look at the mistakes you've made and try to
analyze yourself and why you did certain things or
treated certain people badly. But I think it's more
honest to live that way and not try to escape from
life by drinking or taking drugs. Every addict will
tell you that. I don't deny things as much anymore
and I'm willing to talk about myself more honestly and
not pretend I don't have any real feelings.
Q. What did you feel was missing from your life all
these years?
NOLTE: I think that deep down I've never believed
that anyone really loved or cared for me, even though
I know intellectually that that was not true. My
problem was that I had put this huge fucking wall up
between me and the world and that my drinking and
attitude was a way of keeping the demons away. I
didn't want to think about why I didn't feel loved.
Q: Do you understand why you were like that?
NOLTE: Maybe it has something to do with the fact that
I missed being with my dad when I was a little boy,
maybe. But I don't want to blame anyone else for what
I've done with my life.
I'm sober today, I have a clear mind about what I'm
going to do with myself and I'm ready to get involved
with my life and not let myself just drift in the
wind. It was more than just a drinking problem, it
was an attitude problem. I've just found a better way
of getting through the day. I can't even
intelligently explain why I feel less anguished.
Q: Does it trouble you that so many of your
relationships with women have broken down?
NOLTE: It gets me in the night sometimes when I'm
alone. I wonder why I haven't been able to find a way
to share my life. I guess deep down I feel I have
this loner mentality. I haven't been able to love and
care about the women in my life the way I should have.
But I think I'm in a place now where I want to be a
better man. We'll have to see.
Q: Do you feel like you've found a formula for living?
NOLTE: You could say that. I've just accepted that I'm
slightly different from a lot of people and that I
have a certain notion oif integrity that makes it
harder for me to accept all the bullshit that's out
there. I've always hated falseness in people.
I realized that a lot of my drinking was related to my
also wanting to fit in with other people and not
bother myself with existential questions. Now I don't
have the booze to blur those distinctions, so I just
accept the fact that everyone has the right to choose
how they live their life. I live one way, and I don't
care anymore why other people live another way. That's
the trick I've discovered.
Q: You're clean and sober these days. But do you
believe that you'll ever be free from addiction?
NOLTE: No...no...no...no! There's an understanding
about addiction. It's just learning about yourself;
either things are tough and you detach yourself or it
becomes an experiment and a lifestyle. The thing about
addiction is that you don't feel things; it's about
cutting the pain off, whether it's physical or
psychological. And it's a necessary thing, too. It's
really about whether people can change. In my
lifetime, I've changed a lot - that's a guaranteed
deal.
Q: Do you feel that you're back to good stage in your
life now?
NOLTE: Yeah - but the bad stage was good too! I had a
great time. Some of my greatest moments were in
altered states.
Q: What are your goals in life now?
NOLTE: To be a great father to my son, Brawley, and
have a good life. I don't worry about my work that
much, the films will come and go, but your life keeps
slipping away little by little.
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