Arab Times

Nick Nolte looks back in ‘Rebel’

‘Best way to deal with mistakes is to discuss them’

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NEW YORK, April 16, (AP): You might remember Nick Nolte’s infamous mug shot from 2002, the one where the three-time Oscar nominee wears his hair wild and his shirt Hawaiian. But did you know he has another one from many years before that arrest?

In 1961 Nolte was busted for selling fake draft cards, fined $75,000 and sentenced to 75 years in prison, later suspended. In that booking photo, a pre-famous Nolte wears his hair short and a button-down shirt.

Both embarrassi­ng incidents are heartily discussed in his new memoir, “Rebel: My Life Outside the Lines.” Nolte, 77, is now ready to tell his story — warts and all. The arrests act almost like bookends to a sometimes crazy life.

“I’ve had two mug shots in my lifetime. It’s hard to get those. And if you get them, you better make sure you examine the circumstan­ces that you got them,” Nolte told The Associated Press. “The best way to deal with the biggest mistakes in your life is to discuss them. With everybody, including God.”

The autobiogra­phy traces the rise of the headstrong Nolte — literally, because he had the bizarre habit of head-butting parked cars. He was a Midwestern boy, a natural jock, who found fame later in life when he traded in performing on the stage to movies.

“Acting always appealed to me a lot because it’s risk taking. And it’s something I don’t do naturally. I mean when I’m standing backstage and that curtain is about to open I say, ‘Why would you do this to yourself? Are you really that much of an idiot to just expose

headquarte­rs at Titanic Studios in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital, which has been a base for the series since the pilot.

Speaking on behalf of the production yourself to a thousand people?’” he said.

“And then the curtain opens and, if it goes all right, you don’t remember opening night — there’s too much adrenaline. Actors are risk takers. And they’re taking the risks for their own sanity.”

Nolte, whose hits include “The Prince of Tides,” “Cape Fear,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “The Good Thief,” “The Thin Red Line” and “48 Hrs,” selfmedica­ted to quell his inner demons. “A little chaos around keeps me sane,” he writes.

The book recounts his amazing appetite for drugs — including coke, LSD, HGH and GHB — and the time he single-handedly saved the movie “Under Fire” by smuggling the film canisters out of Mexico, one step ahead of the law.

We learn he ate real dog food in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” and he took real heroin during the eightweek shoot of “The Good Thief” to better portray a heroin addict. He slept with Jacqueline Bisset during filming of “The Deep” but his inability to skate lost him a part in “Slap Shot.” He was offered “Superman” but saw nothing super about the role.

Pulled

Nolte has nice things to say about co-stars Eddie Murphy, Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. He has less than nice things to say about Debra Winger (“hellfire”) and Edward Norton (Nolte vowed to “slit his throat”). He recounts a spectacula­r prank pulled by Woody Harrelson on Sean Penn in Australia that involved real cops and gunshots.

team, executive producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff said in a statement: “Many, many people work insanely hard to create any film or television show. They are creators

May Chen, his editor at HarperColl­ins, said Nolte wrote some of the book by telling his stories out loud. Those anecdotes were later stitched together, alongside journal entries and his own longhand writings. She calls him a “very self-aware” author, not afraid to delve into his own darkness.

“He’s not embarrasse­d about it. This is his life. Obviously, I sure he’s regretful of some of these things but he’s not embarrasse­d by it. He owns up to it,” she said. “Now with hindsight, all these decades later, he can look back and I think he realizes how often things could have really gone wrong for him.”

Nolte describes his own #MeToo moment when, at 21, a Hollywood agent invited him to his Bel Air home for dinner. After the man excused himself, he returned wearing only a silk dressing gown and announced: “Hello, cuddle bunny.” Nolte was out the door quick. “That would be a casting couch. But I was not an actor at that time at all,” he said.

Nolte also has a dim view of Harvey Weinstein, the one-time Miramax company head who had a reputation as a ruthless film editor. (Multiple allegation­s of sexual misconduct last year upended his career.) Nolte recounts how his film “The Golden Bowl” was “reduced to shreds” by Weinstein’s cut before it was sold back to the filmmakers.

Nolte said Weinstein tried to “bully me into a couple of roles” — including “Copland” — and was “manipulati­ve” during awards season. “I never had much admiration for Miramax or Harvey primarily because I had friends who made movies that were shelved,” he said.

every bit as much as actors, writers, producers or directors, and deserve to be recognized as such.” (RTRS)

LOS ANGELES:

Tetanus is no longer a disease threatenin­g the lives of children in 44 countries in part because of UNICEF and Salma Hayek Pinault.

Hayek Pinault received UNICEF’s Danny Kaye Humanitari­an Award on Saturday for spearheadi­ng UNICEF’s campaign to end maternal and neonatal tetanus as well as more global initiative­s. Other honorees at the UNICEF Ball, which took place at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, included Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, and his wife Ambassador Nicole Avant, who were the recipients of the Spirt of Compassion Award.

Comedian Keegan-Michael Key hosted the awards dinner, which attracted an array of talent attending in support of Hayek Pinault and the humanitari­an organizati­on. The night’s guests, speakers, and performers also included UNICEF ambassador Alyssa Milano, UNICEF goodwill ambassador Lilly Singh, Jane Fonda, Pharell Williams, Don Johnson, Netflix’s Scott Stuber, Paramount’s Jim Gianopulos, UNICEF U.S.A. president and CEO Caryl M. Stern, and eight-year-old Syrian author Bana al-Abed. (RTRS)

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