REBEL: MY LIFE OUTSIDE THE LINES

NICK NOLTE | HARPER COLLINS

In these days of highly sanitised Hollywood puff pieces, Nick Nolte’s deliriously candid autobiography reads like a gust of salty fresh air. “It’s been said that

I lie to the press, that I make up outlandish stories to protect myself,” he notes, in the prologue. Here, though, is a life story that you simply couldn’t make up, full of incident, revelation and juicy gossip.

Starting with his days as a Midwestern high-school jock, Nolte catalogues the ups and downs with unstinting frankness. The good times include his ’70s breakthrough, in TV’s Rich Man, Poor Man; ’80s stardom in Down And Out In Beverly Hills; and ’90s acclaim in films such as Cape Fear and Affliction (the latter earning the second of his three Oscar nods, after The Prince Of Tides and before Warrior).

Now 77, Nolte is just as interested in broaching his failings, notably his continual addiction struggles – crystallised with that notorious wild-haired mug-shot (“I looked to all the world like a madman”), taken in 2002 after cops arrested him high on GHB. Written with a recovering addicts’ clarity, Rebel is never selfpitying, just disarmingly honest.

There’s plenty of insider tales to chew on, from boozing his way through his audition for Apocalypse Now to pranking Sean Penn on The Thin Red Line. But it’s really the free-and-easy way that Nolte paints his pinball journey that makes this a memoir to remember. If even half is true, he’s lived one hell of a life. James Mottram